Quote:
Originally Posted by Dedicated Mind
Palin on Katie Couric says she believes the constitution gives Americans a "right to privacy" which is what Roe V Wade is based on. Many conservatives say the constitution does not explicitly state a right to privacy and that Roe V Wade should be overturned.
Palin is clueless as to the argument that is necessary to overturn Roe V Wade and has agreed with liberals!
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Apparently ignorance is bliss. The right to Privacy that the Supreme Court inferred from the Bill of rights may be questionable as to an actual right, however applying it to Roe v. Wade was where they crossed the line.
Specifically the 9th Amendment which says that all the rights of the people are not contained explicitly in the Constitution ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.") in conjunction with the rights to privacy from government search and seizures contained in the Fourth Amendment make a good inference for a right of non government interference in private actions.
The question asked in Griswold in 1965 was this. "Does the Constitution protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on a couple's ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?"
The court found in a 7-2 decision in 1965 that, "Though the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations."
The problem then is not the so called right to privacy that the court created because I think every American intuitively knows they have a right against government interference in private matters. The problem was the jump in Roe v. Wade that the killing of another human was a private matter.
The question presented to the court in Roe was "Does the Constitution embrace a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?" this court erred in applying the facts of a birth control case to abortion and finding that the right of privacy included the right to murder.
Sarah Palin is not out of line in inferring a right to privacy from the Constitution, even now there are probably only two justices on the court who
might disagree with her as to the overarching right to privacy in the Constitution. The argument for the court has always been if the right to privacy included the right to abortion not if the right exists.
As a side note at the time of Roe. v Wade the Texas statute under question allowed for abortion to save the life of the mother, so this was nothing more than trying to extend abortion as a means of birth control.