1 post tagged “right to privacy”
The right to choice is based on the right of privacy. The Supreme Court found that if a governmental agency was going to make rules that invaded your privacy, the government had to prove that it had a legitimate state interest in violating you privacy. The 9th Amendment in the Bill of Rights says:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
In other words, just because a right is not specifically spelled out in the Bill of Rights or the rest of the Constitution, that should not be taken as evidence that a right doesn’t exist. The Founding Fathers lived under English Common Law, which were basically laws and rights that were created by the courts as they interpreted the law. The Supreme Court of the United States, a creation of the Founding Fathers, has found and upheld several times the right to privacy, claiming that, although it is not specifically named as a right, we can see the intent of it from the other rights named in the Constitution. The Supreme Court found that without a right to some privacy, there can be no true liberty. If a government can tell you what to do in the privacy of your own home or your own body with no good reason to do so, no compelling interest, you don’t have liberty. So if the government is going to infringe on your liberty, it has to prove it has a good reason. The Supreme Court found this right in the 14th Amendment, which said that a person had the right to due process before one’s liberty could be taken. If anyone ever says to you that the right to privacy or the right to an abortion is not found in the Constitution, remember that.
But remember also that the right of privacy can be abridged if the State can prove that it has a compelling interest, and there are judges out there who believe that the State does have a compelling interest. They believe that the State can save the lives of what they would consider babies. It is an argument that I don’t believe in, but it is not an argument that no one believes in.
There are two ways to remove the right of choice. The first is the change the makeup of the courts, so the judges who did not believe that the State’s interest outweighed the right to privacy with those who do. The judges exist. Roe v. Wade was not unanimous and was almost overturned (at least in part) by Gonzales v. Carhart. Who become judges is greatly influenced not only by what judges you vote for in local elections, but also by who you vote for in state and national elections. It is very likely that the next President of the United States will be nominating more than one judge to the Supreme Court. It is very likely that that nomination will be for someone fairly young, like John Roberts, who might be on the Court voting for decades to come. Right now, replacing even one judge, might overturn Roe v. Wade for our lifetimes.
The second method of removing the right of choice -- or even more broadly, the right to privacy – would be to change the Constitution. Listen to Mike Huckabee:
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, to amend the Constitution so it's in God standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.
In a part, Huckabee is right. It was a lot easier to add the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that prohibited slavery than it was to remove the Exodus 21, which gave instructions for selling one’s children into slavery, from the Word of the living God. It was easier to add the 14th Amendment than it was to remove Job 1, where Job is said to be blameless and upright but also the owner of many slaves. Job’s slaves were, in fact, considered evidence of God’s blessing. Hmm?
Christians have come to change their minds about slavery. They now think that it’s a sin, despite the clear evidence that the Bible has virtually no trouble with the ownership of people. But for some reason, many Christians still believe that abortion is a sin despite the fact that there is nothing in the Bible prohibiting it. In fact, in some instances, it commands that the unborn be destroyed. Read Genesis 38 some time. Among the peculiar moral concepts in that chapter, we find that almost everyone in the story was quite keen on enforcing their Biblical Law of burning an unwed pregnant woman to death, which would, of course, also kill the fetus. And Numbers 5: 11-31 (at least in the New English Bible’s translation) gives instructions for performing magical abortions.
It’s possible that just as the people who used to support laws that inhibited the liberty of Blacks will come around and stop their support of laws that inhibit the liberty of women’s bodies, but until that time, it is important to vote for people who support the 14th Amendment. If we don’t, the right of choice may not be the only right we loose. The 14th Amendment and the right of privacy found within it have been used to give people the right to contraception, to marry people of a different race, and to have sex with consenting adults regardless of their gender. If you have an interest in any of those rights, you have an interest in voting to support those who support the 14th Amendment and the right to privacy.
