Fabulous post, and NOT, to me, a vanity.
This whole argument is why despite being ‘pro life” I have never wanted argue (like many) that there was anything wrong with the “logic” used in Roe v Wade, that we possess an unalienable right to privacy. We DO in fact possess that unalienable right, and we possess other rights too.
In Roe v Wade the problem with the decision was that ANOTHER PERSON IS INVOLVED, the unborn baby. Despite our right to privacy, we do not have the right to murder in private because it tramples another person’s superior and preexisting right. The court just refused to address the point that a fetus is a baby with rights. The court was wrong about abortion, but the idea that we have other rights including privacy is correct.
So we absolutely should maintain that our rights to privacy and free association and even our rights to self-defense and control of our own bodies make it illegal for government to attempt to steal our CHOICE, to steal our resources we need for our health and our family’s health, to direct those resources, to limit those resources, to limit our right to associate with other people to share our resources to care for ourselves, etc. etc.
In concrete example words, if a group of 100 young single celibate men with no real risk of sexually transmitted disease and no risk of insanity and no risk of pregnancy and no risk of drug use all want to get together and pool their resources to use if one of the group develops pneumonia, then it is in fact their right to do so. Very cheap insurance plan for people in that group if they want! No STD, HIV, drunken accidents, drug-induced psychosis, pregnancies, breast cancers, etc, etc. Use of that right, which some would call an insurance plan, which is even memorialized and recognized (not granted by) the ninth and other amendments may not be trampled, limited, regulated, outlawed of otherwise controlled by government, especially the Federal government. (This example is just the tip of an iceberg of examples that would touch on different types of rights.)
People are finally understanding the 10th amendment; and now it is time to raise awareness of the ninth amendment and related issues, and to promote an understanding that WE POSSESS MANY RIGHTS that may not legally be trampled by government.
So thank you again for your great post which raises this issue in a really precise way with citations I previously knew nothing about. More power to you.
(dang, that was long but therapeutic...)
Actually there is a lot that is wrong with the logic used in Roe v. Wade, but inasmuch as they relied on the principle of Liberty as enunciated in Griswold, they were correct that there is a right to privacy, but they took it (for no logical reason whatsoever) to include some kind of fundamental right to abort our posterity. That was never a fundamental right to abortion before 1973 and it was, in fact, a crime in all states at the time the Constitution was enacted.
Griswold was simply distorted to make a traditional crime or moral turpitude into a fundamental Constitutional right by the Roe Court. Roe still needs to be overturned, but Griswold needs to be affirmed.