There is a right to privacy.
Does the Federal Government have the *authority* by our grant to it, to restrain that right with regard to certain private behaviours? Where would that authority be given in the Constitution? No where. Interstate commerce?
Most private behaviours have NO significant component of interstate commerce.
Do the States, individually, have such authority? If their charter or established practise allows it. Sure. And they have to. It is to the States to pursue criminal acts, a duty.
Does the FEDERAL Constitutional protections to indivial rights such as found Bill of Rights apply to the States? Before the 14th Amendment, I'd say yes, after the 14th, everybody seems to say yes. Although the Federal Courts are inconsistent -- some clearly specified rights especially protected in the BOR have NOT received much protection from the courts.
That includes a "privacy" right as basic as the freedom to travel unmolested in a reasonable and non-dangerous manner from point A to point B. While the BOR is clear we should be secure in our persons and efects, the courts allow random stops and checkpoints!
The right to be secure in our places, unmolested by the government certainly *allows* for us to perform actions unacceptable in public. Get drunk at home, that's fine. In public ... that's a fair crime -- that is it should be a crime. In public, there is a danger to others, and even a bad example. If a LOCALITY wants to enforce acceptable PUBLIC behaviours, even if they are cosmetic, more power to them. Locally people have considerable ability to change the laws and their enforcement per the requirements of their particular place and time.
But even in privacy, WE can not allow crimes such as murder, assault, theft, etc. to occur -- it is proper to make sure those "private" actions are criminal, even when committed in complete privacy, even for most of them -- when all parties agree in some vile contract, say in assisted "suicide".
But we have to give the greatest respect to the Liberty of judgement of free, sane, adults. For the sake of Liberty, and even potential Redemption, the presumption must be that the free, sane adult had some good reason to perform some questionabe action, rather than to presume in micro-detailed code and regulation a lengthy written code has better judgement than an adult. No shelf of written codes has one whit of judgement or reason. They, at best, and some are th best, represent distilled and carefully considered judgements and reasonings, but of themselves they are have no judgement, nor reason. Only a fellow human can apply them, can show reason and judgement. All respect is due that fellow human, first and ever foremost.
Sometimes lengthy micro-detailed codes of regulation upon conduct are necessary -- but still, should a adult go seemingly afoul of them every benefit of benevolent consideration must be given to that adult's action.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is one aspect of that benevolence of consideration towards anothers actions. That type of respect is intrinsic to true modesty, to crafting a virtue out privacy.
Yes, privacy is a right. A good right.
But to say privacy includes a protection from government interference in killing someone else, or even killing an almost born baby, or a fetus of human form .. that is a false definition of privacy, a vile attempt at deception to cover evil.
That common, yet untrue, statement you repeated that "there is no right to privacy", what then does it mean? Some mean it in a restricted sense, that the Constition, the Bill of Righst and the amendments do not specifically mention a "right to privacy". Even that limited "dictionary-level" reading is not quite true. The BOR's proections against search and seizure are a right to a type of privacy.
What I think is more meant by those throwing that false motto around, are somethings we all should resist. One is the concept that the government rations out rights to us, that the govenment is the source of rights or "privileges"-- like the privilege of driving. Well driving -- a form of traveling -- is a right! A right that the government may and should reguate, yet it is a right and not a privilege.
Two is that the government has all the privilege to interfere in and ascertain, to their wants every and any action we might enage in. That we, individuals, may not expect that any quarter, corner, or moment of our lives may not be totally open to arbitrary review by some government agent, panel, or court.
Those two concepts, as ways of viewing our rights are hallamrks of a monarchy, of a tyranny, of a land where the people are subjects of the state, and not the proprieters and masters of the state. By our founding we are the latter, and by that founding bloody and long WAR of a revolution did we SEPERATE and BIRTH our free nation.
Let us not be a late-term abortion of a nation by entertaining such abortive concepts as "there is no right to privacy"!
There is a right to privacy, to freedom of action, to Liberty. Period. Stand up for it!
[ok, now you turn the other face and say]
But we have to give the greatest respect to the Liberty of judgement of free, sane, adults. For the sake of Liberty, and even potential Redemption, the presumption must be that the free, sane adult had some good reason to perform some questionabe action, rather than to presume in micro-detailed code and regulation a lengthy written code has better judgement than an adult. No shelf of written codes has one whit of judgement or reason. They, at best, and some are th best, represent distilled and carefully considered judgements and reasonings, but of themselves they are have no judgement, nor reason. Only a fellow human can apply them, can show reason and judgement. All respect is due that fellow human, first and ever foremost.
Are you another shill for the deathies? We do not execute serial killer rapists on the sort of hearsay that this court ruled was a valid expression of Terri's wishes. Is the right to live something which is to be sacrificed on a whim? Turn your first face, above. It should be your only face.