ROE VS. WADE

There are three cases that I have researched and often quote when I am defending adoptee rights. It seems like the Republicans are determined to overturn Roe vs. Wade in order to end all abortions. You can read the case information here. Roe vs. Wade did not give women the right to abort. It gave women the right to privacy when it came to terminating her pregnancy. It removed the government interference in many of the states' abortion laws. Up until 1973, abortion was illegal in many states. The states on their own individual levels either restricted it or made it unlawful all together.

Another case that is similar to Roe vs. Wade is Griswold vs. Connecticut. Griswold vs. Connecticut gave married couples the right to privacy again. Contraception was illegal for even married folks to have in 1965. It made the state laws that banned contraception. Both cases before the Supreme Court began this process of the definition of right to privacy. Both of these courts defined the right to privacy was about the right to be free from governmental interference in the private lives of its peoples.

From Griswold vs. Connecticut:

"Further, this right to privacy is "fundamental" when it concerns the actions of married couples, because it "is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions." Because a married couple's use of contraception constitutes a "fundamental" right, Connecticut must prove to the Court that its law is "compelling" and "absolutely necessary" to overcome that right (i.e., the "strict scrutiny test"). Because Connecticut failed to prove this, the law was struck down as applied.

Other justices, while agreeing that marital privacy is a "fundamental right" and that the Connecticut law should be struck down, disagreed with Justice Douglas as to where in the Constitution such a "fundamental right" exists. In his concurrence, Justice Arthur Goldberg argued that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the Bill of Rights does not exhaust all the rights contained by the people, allows the Court to find the "fundamental right to marital privacy" without having to ground it in a specific constitutional amendment. In another concurrence, Justice John Marshall Harlan II maintained that a "fundamental right to marital privacy" exists only because marital privacy has traditionally been protected by American society. Finally, in yet another concurrence, Justice Byron White argued that a fundamental right to marital privacy constitutes a liberty under the Due Process Clause, and is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against the states."

In another case concerning contraception, Eisenstadt vs. Baird also ruled similarly on the issue of giving contraception to young women. Here is a brief on the case:

"Appellee William Baird was convicted at a bench trial in the Massachusetts Superior Court under Massachusetts General Laws Ann., c. 272, § 21, first, for exhibiting contraceptive articles in the course of delivering a lecture on contraception to a group of students at Boston University and, second, for giving a young woman a package of Emko vaginal foam at the close of his address.

As interpreted by the State Supreme Judicial Court, these provisions make it a felony for anyone, other than a registered physician or pharmacist acting in accordance with the terms of [the exceptions noted below] to dispense any article with the intention that it be used for the prevention of conception. The statutory scheme distinguishes among three distinct classes of distributees — first, married persons may obtain contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, but only from doctors or druggists on prescription; second, single persons may not obtain contraceptives from anyone to prevent pregnancy; and, third, married or single persons may obtain contraceptives from anyone to prevent, not pregnancy, but the spread of disease.... "

Here is the Supreme Court's decision:

"While I join the opinion of the Court, there is for me a narrower ground for affirming the Court of Appeals. This to me is a simple First Amendment case, that amendment being applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth.

Under no stretch of the law as presently stated could Massachusetts require a license for those who desire to lecture on planned parenthood, contraceptives, the rights of women, birth control, or any allied subject, or place a tax on that privilege....

Had Baird not "given away " a sample of one of the devices whose use he advocated, there could be no question about the protection afforded him by the First Amendment....

Baird gave an hour’s lecture on birth control and as an aid to understanding the ideas which he was propagating he handed out one sample of one of the devices whose use he was endorsing....

It is irrelevant to the application of these principles that Baird went beyond the giving of information about birth control and advocated the use of contraceptive articles. The First Amendment protects the opportunity to persuade to action whether that action be unwise or immoral, or whether the speech incites to action....

Putting contraceptives on display is certainly an aid to speech and discussion. Handing an article under discussion to a member of the audience is a technique known to all teachers and is commonly used....

I do not see how we can have a Society of the Dialogue, which the First Amendment envisages, if time-honored teaching techniques are barred to those who give educational lectures."

The two other Supreme Justices also concurred with only one dissenting. In these two cases, its very clear that the right to privacy is about the right to be free from governmental interference.

In Roe vs. Wade:

"Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 ; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra; Meyer v. Nebraska, supra. See also Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 ; Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 . As recently as last Term, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453 , we recognized "the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person [410 U.S. 113, 170] as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. "Certainly the interests of a woman in giving of her physical and emotional self during pregnancy and the interests that will be affected throughout her life by the birth and raising of a child are of a far greater degree of significance and personal intimacy than the right to send a child to private school protected in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), or the right to teach a foreign language protected in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923)." Abele v. Markle, 351 F. Supp. 224, 227 (Conn. 1972)."

My question to those reading this: Do you really want Roe vs. Wade overturned? It will begin to tear down the right to privacy from governmental interference. This right is a fundamental right. Do you want to be stripped of that? I know that I don't. I know that I don't want it for my daughters. I want the same sexual autonomy that men have. If we do this, we will see women's familial choices stripped as they were in the Era of Mass Surrender.