The problem is not in whether or not a couple, married or not, has a right to privacy and to use or not use contraceptions. The prolem with the decision is that it isn’t a constitutional right, which is what the Supreme Court is supposed to decide. Some states at that time allowed contraceptive use, some didn’t. Both groups of states were fully in line with the Constitution, since anything not covered by the Constitution is the purview of the states.
Roe was supposedly based on the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th and 14th amendments.
Thanks for the link - it is very illuminating!
This is increasingly how law is made in the U.S.–not by legislatures, but rather by the selection of supreme court justices who can be counted on to implement social policy changes. Rather than change laws through legislatures, cases are carefully selected and moved through courts to overturn existing law. Hardly what the founders intended.
From Stewart’s succinct and clear disssenting opinion:
Rich, you are totally correct. My point was not that Griswold was based on sound jurisprudence - and we know that it was not - but that the “right” to privacy had expanded to the extent that marriage was at least recognized in that horrid decision, and then totally ignored in the law.
People who are pro-choice do not call a “fetus” a child. Apparently only pro-lifers do that.
Wow…sounds like the pro-choicers are using “fetus” because they are biased.
Whenever we wish to remove legal protection from any class of human beings, the first thing to be done is to rename them. I suppose that we might refer to the newborn as “extrauterine fetuses” and to the old and disabled as “vegetables.”
Only people who have a superiority complex dehumanize those who are more lowly and humble than themselves. Once dehumanized, they can, from their lofty perch, declare the unborn unfit to live.
Actually, bigotry and dehumanizing others are linked to an inferiority complex. Such attitudes are fostered by a deep-seated feeling that the bigot is inferior, and must tear down others, because he cannot rise himself.
So if you prefer the word fetus, you are still referring to a human.
Hmmmm…I wonder …I stand corrected. Those who feel inadequate themselves making others lower so as to falsely build themselves up trying to make up for their own shortcoming at the expense of others.
Note how someone who doesn’t have a job demands we use the term “fetus” instead of child.
the issue is somewhat moot because many states, – I think all of them but I don’t have the figures at hand – have a constitutional or statutory right to privacy that is, of course, independent of the federal right.
given the near universal right to privacy as a matter of law in the United States, its more than a jingle.