U.S. must fight erosion of our right to privacy
The right to privacy is the constitutional principle that government should not invade the private, intimate lives of families or individuals without sufficient warrant. This concept seems so obvious, so ordinary in our reliance on it.
But it has been debated since the late 1870s when the Comstock Act defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit, making it a federal offense to disseminate birth control through the mail or across state lines. In the early 1900s, laws loosened, allowing birth control clinics to open. It was in 1965 that privacy, as we know it, was "born" (Griswold v. Connecticut) and the Supreme Court declared that married couples should be allowed to buy condoms without state interference.
Before the 1965 ruling, Connecticut relied on an archaic statute going back to 1879 that read: Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not for less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned.
Beginning Monday as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins reviewing Alito, we must demand that they select a Supreme Court judge who will protect our right to privacy. Unfortunately there are voices in our nation's Capitol advocating a narrow position that the Constitutional right to privacy does not exist. When we hear these extreme positions we must consider what a United States without privacy would look like? Are we prepared to:
Require married couples to show ID in order to buy condoms? Force a woman to carry the baby of her rapist?
Fine or imprison adults for having consensual sex in their own bedrooms?
Court order a woman to undergo medical procedures she does not want to have?
Allow pharmacists to deny a person FDA-approved drugs prescribed by her doctor? Do nothing while a president orders spying on American citizens without judicial oversight?
Our country has a history of state laws that intrude into the privacy of families. It's hard to believe, but states have forced members of families to undergo sterilization or use contraceptive devices involuntarily. If the right to privacy were revoked some states would require women to undergo the full term of a pregnancy even in cases when they are victims of rape or incest, or the pregnancy threatens their own lives, potentially leaving already living children without a mother.
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