What does privacy have to do with Abortion?

[vern_humphrey]

Well, it’s always presented in a scenario where the woman or girl is going to be beaten to death - and while I’m sure this happens, it’s quite rare - and there is always the option to “go visit Aunt Mary” for nine months, which is what people did before abortion became legal.

The use of improbable scenarios and highly rare events is their stock-in-trade. You’ll even see people use that here – to make digs at those who work for pro-life goals, on the premise that Pro-life = “Political undesirable.”

 

[master_catholic]

Bump

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

As I understand the issue, the whole “privacy” discussion comes into play because of the previous Supreme Court decision striking down laws against contraceptives. Before the Pill, “contraceptives” generally referred to barrier methods of one kind or another (condom, IUD, etc.). The Justices declared that a husband and wife had the right to privacy in their bedroom, thererfore, you could not tell them not to use a condom. Hey, it’s not hurting anyone, right?

SO, all sorts of conservatives (including the pope) raised a ruckus saying that legalizing contraceptives would lead to an increase in adultery (by removing pregnancy as a risk), an increase in divorce (what’s the #1 cause of divorce? Adultery.), an increase in child abuse, an increase in out-of-wedlock births (and, therefore, single parent homes, maternal poverty, and increased crime) and, eventually, abortion.

Pooh, pooh said the liberals. You people are SO backwards…

The evidence is in, and legalizing contraceptive did, in fact lead to all of the consequences the conservatives predicted. (Being Cassandra just stinks.) The tie to abortion starts with the obvious, “Well, I was using contraception, I didn’t want a baby, so now I have to get rid of the baby because the contraception failed…” And if you missed that, the Supreme Court used the contraception case as precedent for legalizing abortion, on the explicitly stated assumption that IF science could better show what happened in the womb, the decision would have to be revisited.

Well, science can now show exactly what’s going on in the womb, but nobody will seriously revisit the case because, in Justice Ginsberg’s wisdom (pretty sure it was her, this is a paraphrase), “Women have structured their lives around the availability of abortion, so we can’t make it illegal.” Who cares about right and wrong when we’re talking about convenience?!?

Yeah, and Al Capone structured his life and plans around the ability to “remove” anyone who stood in his way… but that didn’t make it legal.