Roe v Wade is one of the most important legal decisions in the United States. Roe definitively establishes our right to privacy, a right only hinted at in the U.S. Constitution. Roe was based on a coherent reading of multiple preceding cases, and therefore is not "judge-made law". Roe is consistent with those cases that demonstrate a person’s right to liberty means he is not required to risk his life to save another’s life. Roe is also based on the watershed case, "Griswold vs. Connecticut," that created the so-called “zone of privacy” around married reproductive sexual practices. Roe is a libertarian high point.
After Roe no woman, or man for that matter, is legally required to give her right to her own body to a fetus or anyone else, even though that fetus or other person will die if not extended that right. Roe demonstrates I have no obligation to be a Good Samaritan even if by doing so I will save someone’s life. In crasser terms, abortion is legal in the same way it is legal evict someone from my house even if I knowingly leave my front door open and he moves in. I can legally throw him out, even if it means he will die. That right is guaranteed by my inalienable right to liberty. No one, fetus, friend or stranger, can make a claim against my inalienable natural rights, whether based on need or any other reason. If I want to exert my right to help another that is my choice. Roe means I alone choose whether or not to be a Good Samaritan. Choice is here to stay!
I fear however, and with just cause, that the next Supreme-Court Justice may well decide to overturn the Parental Notification laws that now exist in all but six states and Washington, D.C. This would be a radical swing not to the right but to the left. The Supreme Court has already decided to hear the case of "Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England," this autumn. In Ayotte, a lower U.S. Appeals Court overturned New Hampshire's Parental Notification law, and the Supreme Court now has to decide on the constitutionality of Parental Notification laws when a minor is seeking an abortion. If individual state's Parental Notification laws are found unconstitutional this will be yet another enormous blow to the independence of the family. With a decision against the notification of parents when a minor pursues an abortion, parents must cede ever more of their rights to raise their own children to the state. And states never raise healthy children.
Article comments
1 - JR
If the parents haven't got a good enough relationship with their child to know when she's pregnant, they probably don't deserve to know.
2 - Nancy
A high percentage of the time, the girl is pregnant due to abuse within the family, i.e. a sexually predatory male relative (usually the stepfather or father), and an enabling mother. And these are the people the government insists on notifying?
3 - Dave Nalle
Spoken as someone who has clearly never been a parent of a teen.
Dave
4 - Nancy
Spoken as someone who has clearly never been raped by your father, uncle, brother, or family "friend".
5 - Dave Nalle
Nancy, we're both right. What do we do about it?
Dave
6 - Nancy
I don't know, but I don't think imposing blanket condition laws is the solution. I really DO understand where you're coming from. If I had a teenage kid who got pregnant or got some girl pregnant, I'd definitely want to know, but then again, if I were the bastard who got the kid pregnant, I'd also want to be the one 'in charge' of taking care of the situation, so that no one else would find out. So if you take a 3rd party out of the loop, and the ones involved & making decisions are possibly the ones who are the villains of the piece to begin with, what kind of protection are you truly affording the kid involved?
To my mind, the best parental notification for a molesting parent would be when the cops come to arrest him. I could care less about his parental rights - or the mother, in that case, since chances are she very well knows or suspects what's going on, & doesn't want to open her eyes to it.
But then again, I remember being a kid. Would I have told my parents, had I ever gotten pregnant? Hell, no, and I wasn't even molested by them, either. But I would have been too ashamed.
I think I could have gone to a counsellor or judge more easily then I could have told my parents. But in the case of abusive parents, someone also needs to see to protecting the kid & looking after her rights, & I feel her rights & welfare come before that of the parents, in any event. What do you suggest?
7 - Nancy
There is also the question (which I forgot to include) about protecting the kid from having her parents' wishes imposed on her. What if a girl wants an abortion, but the parents don't believe in it? Should she be forced to carry to term, just because she's a minor? Isn't it still her body, & her right to choose? Conversely, what about a kid who wants to keep the baby, & parents who want to force an abortion? They shouldn't be stuck w/having to raise a baby the girl can't possibly handle, & they are probably better judges of how this would impact the girl & the family (assuming this is not an abuse case).
I don't know. There are too many variables, too many complicating factors, to just pass a law requiring this or that in all cases, because all cases are not alike. I do think someone should be appointed as an outside control, so to speak, to keep overall tabs on things, prosecute where prosecution is needed, etc. but I also know how the government screws up everything they touch - look how badly they mess up foster care, etc.
8 - Dave Nalle
>>To my mind, the best parental notification for a molesting parent would be when the cops come to arrest him. <<
But allowing kids to get abortions without notifying some responsible adult will let more molestors get away with it than not. If the molestor isn't a parent, but a friend, neighbor, brother, uncle or whatever, the kid is likely to get the abortion, tell no one, and go on being molested. At least if their parents get told there's some chance in some cases that something will get done. If no one gets told nothing ever gets done about the molestors.
Dave
9 - Nancy
I don't know. All I know is I'm not qualified on enough facets of this issue to make any recommendations let alone decisions. I can see it from all points of view, and as I said, there are too many variables to give broad answers. In these cases, one size does not fit all.
10 - Al Barger
As a leading member of the Libertarian Party, I strongly reject this assertion: "Roe is a libertarian high point."
Oh HELL no. For starters, many good libertarians are pro-life, on the same grounds that they believe in laws against murder.
Besides which, Roe is HORRIBLE constitutional law. The SCOTUS just made that crap up wholecloth. A court just arbitrarily making law like this is generally a cure FAR worse than the disease. If this unelected branch of government can just MAKE UP laws, pull them directly out of the center of their asses like this, then no liberty is safe- as has been proven a hundred different ways since Roe.
11 - Victor Plenty
Al, your case might be stronger if you bothered to at least try to address the points already made about the case law leading up to Roe, including Griswold v. Connecticut.
12 - Steve McCallister
The headline "Roe v Wade Safe" is misleading in the extreme. As was made plain when Justice Blackmun's papers were released last year, the Justices initially voted to overturn Roe v Wade in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey and only later re-aligned to preserve Roe (look for Blackmun papers on the NPR website or here's a CBS News story http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/04/supremecourt/main603944.shtml )
So, saying Roe is "safe" is patently untrue.
Very plainly, Roe is very much at risk. Indeed, if the new Justice was replacing Renquist, that would not change the balance in the court -- since O'Conner was a swing vote on the court, the balance will definitely change.
As for parental notification, like Roe itself, this is a fine illustration of when we should not intrude in the "gray areas" of families and family communication with black-and-white solutions. Current doctrine allows for parental notification -- as long as there is a judicial or other alternative available. Why would the alternative be needed? Incest, abusive parents -- lots of reasons. Nothing prohibits parental notification if, for example, the physician decides she or he wants to make that a condition of providing an abortion. This is a thoughtful and appropriate doctrine -- and I say that as the parent of a college-aged daughter.
13 - Chad
There is also the practicle issue of infanticide and do-it-yourself abortions. The more obsticals there are to getting a legal abortion, the dead babys and hurt young women there will be.
14 - carmine
Steve McCallister,
"Almost" is a far cry from "is". Since 1992 there have been over a decade of additional cases that tie the liberty to have an abortion down even more completely than even then. The majority opinion in the Casey Case is near water tight, and Roberts is not exaggerating when he says Roe is established law. It is. Re-read the case and then compare to the news article you referred to. NPR et. al. are merely attempting to keep us fearful of conservatives. Re-read the case and then comment on the specifics:
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/306/resources
Remember this is the court that turned eminent domain into "imminent domain" a la Souter.
15 - Eyeless In Gaza
Interesting post. I agree with your fears about the overturning of the Parental Notification laws.
I wonder, however, if your justification of Parental notification does not contradict your earlier endorsement of abortion as freedom of choice.
You make a (crude) analogy between having an abortion and kicking out a person who has moved into your house (by your tacit consent), even if kicking out that person ensures that this person will die. The freedom to have an abortion, therefore, should be construed as the freedom from responsibility for other people's lives, i.e. freedom not to be a Good Samaritan.
But, there is a great problem with this idea. Either a fetus is human life or it is not. If it is not, then it is irrelevant to your analogy and your discussion of the freedom not to �save someone�s life.�
But, if it is a human life, then it is of a nature completely from the individual that moves into your house. The individual in your house is a free, autonomous being. Ultimately, he has responsibility over his welfare. You cannot ensure that a person �will die,� unless you violate his freedom by committing an unlawful act of violence against him, because he bears the final responsibility for his fate. If he is starving, then he alone has the burden of feeding himself; if he is sick, it is he who has the responsibility of checking himself into a hospital. And so on.
But there is a relationship between people in which one person does have this kind of responsibility over another: the relationship between parent and child. You yourself stress the nature of this relationship in your defense of parent notification, with your claim that �parents are the fiduciaries of their children�s rights.� And this means, of course, that the parent holds the burden of educating, feeding, clothing etc. his child until that child is of legal age. If the child is starving, it is the parent who must feed him or face legal repercussions; if the child is sick, it is the parent who has the responsibility of getting him medical care or else.
Which gets us back to the fetus issue. If the fetus is a human life, then the relationship between fetus and the body that holds it must be mother and child. And if this relationship is between mother and child, then your analogy of kicking someone out of your house simply does not work. The mother cannot be indifferent to the welfare of her child, in the way that the owner of the house has the freedom to ignore the fate of the unlucky person evicted from his house.
16 - Eyeless In Gaza
Interesting post. I agree with your fears about the overturning of the Parental Notification laws.
I wonder, however, if your justification of Parental notification does not contradict your earlier endorsement of abortion as freedom of choice.
You make a (crude) analogy between having an abortion and kicking out a person who has moved into your house (by your tacit consent), even if kicking out that person ensures that this person will die. The freedom to have an abortion, therefore, should be construed as the freedom from responsibility for other people's lives, i.e. freedom not to be a Good Samaritan.
But, there is a great problem with this idea. Either a fetus is human life or it is not. If it is not, then it is irrelevant to your analogy and your discussion of the freedom not to "save someone's life."
But, if it is a human life, then it is of a nature completely from the individual that moves into your house. The individual in your house is a free, autonomous being. Ultimately, he has responsibility over his welfare. You cannot ensure that a person "will die," unless you violate his freedom by committing an unlawful act of violence against him, because he bears the final responsibility for his fate. If he is starving, then he alone has the burden of feeding himself; if he is sick, it is he who has the responsibility of checking himself into a hospital. And so on.
But there is a relationship between people in which one person does have this kind of responsibility over another: the relationship between parent and child. You yourself stress the nature of this relationship in your defense of parent notification, with your claim that "parents are the fiduciaries of their children's rights." And this means, of course, that the parent holds the burden of educating, feeding, clothing etc. his child until that child is of legal age. If the child is starving, it is the parent who must feed him or face legal repercussions; if the child is sick, it is the parent who has the responsibility of getting him medical care or else.
Which gets us back to the fetus issue. If the fetus is a human life, then the relationship between fetus and the body that holds it must be mother and child. And if this relationship is between mother and child, then your analogy of kicking someone out of your house simply does not work. The mother cannot be indifferent to the welfare of her child, in the way that the owner of the house has the freedom to ignore the fate of the unlucky person evicted from his house.
17 - Eyeless In Gaza
Sorry that I commented twice above. Something screwy happened to the quotation marks in the first comment.
My apologies!
18 - carmine
Sneaky Sneaky Eyeless (still smart idea), but YOU said tacit consent not I. And that IS the crux of the morality of abortion, though not the legality. Can one enter into a contract with an as-of-yet conceived embryo/fetus/potential person. I think no. But if a woman leaves the door open knowing the likelihood someone may take up residence in, well, her womb, is that a contract of sorts, allbeit signed with quite a different pen? Here I think a case can be made for a moral obligation incurred by the holder of that open door policy. I once met a couple who aborted their fetus because it would interfere with a vacation they were planning that entailed drinking and swimming and other potentially fetus damaging activities. Was that a morally justifiable action, certainly not. Should it be legal, certainly yes. After all it is legal to lie to your friends and cheat on your lover, but is it moral, no. The beauty of Western law is that it is rarely focussed on enforcing morality, despite our nut-case extremist Christians that would have it otherwise.
19 - carmine
Blow hard that I am, I forgot to answer your question. Yes, an embryo/fetus is a living, genetically unique, biologically human being. But full grown human beings do not have any claims to my right to liberty so neither should a fetus, unless there is some sort of contractual obligation.
20 - Nancy
Actually, technically, until it's self-sustaining outside the womb, an embryo/fetus is a parasite; not all that different from after it's born, if I consider some people I know.
21 - Eyeless In Gaza
But, Carmine, if we define the fetus as a human being, then there must be a legal contract between the fetus and the person that holds it.
The reason why parents have legal obligations to their children is that we define children as incapable of being fully free, fully autonomous individuals. They are instead dependent on their parents for basic needs, and, as a result, the parents hold the legal rights of their children until the children come of age to enter society as self-governing individuals.
A fetus can only be viewed in the same way. It is completely dependent on the body holding it, and could not possibly survive without the support of that body. It is the very opposite of autonomous. So how can you make a parallel between a full-grown human being and a fetus as having no claim on your liberty? The reason why an adult has no claim on your liberty is that we deem him to be a self-governing actor, fully responsible for his own welfare. But a fetus, like a child, cannot possibly assume this responsibility.
22 - Annie
I think it's important that everyone understand that Ayotte v. PPNEE is NOT about the constitutionality of parental notification. It actually has nothing to do with parents. It's about health of the woman exceptions within restrictive abortion laws.
Roe restricted abortion in the third trimester EXCEPT in cases where the health or life of the woman is in danger. Casey in 1992 and Stenberg in 2000 strengthened that holding in Roe, stating all restrictive laws on abortion access, be it mandated delays, parental notification/consent, or late term aborion bans MUST contain an health exception, otherwise they will be found unconstitutional and thus enjoined. And this is what we've seen around the country when states pass restrictive laws that FAIL to contain a health exception; they're enjoined.
In Ayotte, New Hampshire passed a parental notification law that did NOT contain this required health exception, so PPNNE sued and the law was enjoined. The Supreme Court will now review the entire concept of the health exception (NOT parental notification) and whether it should remain unconstitutional not to protect the health of the woman in restrictive laws.
They'll also be looking at one other issue, the standard of review with regards to all abortions, but that explaination is difficult to explain. Another day...
Ayotte is SO MUCH MORE than parental notification. Please correct people when they're discussing this case. Ayotte has the potential of gutting Roe without overturning it. Roberts and Ayotte are the perfect storm, really, for anti-choice zealots.
23 - Steve McCallister
Carmine, you say, "almost" is a far cry from "is" vis a vis overturning Roe and then assert that NPR is on some kind of mission to scare people about conservatives. "Almost" in this Casey decision was an initial vote by 5 justices to overturn Roe -- not according to CBS or NPR, but according to Justice Blackmun himself. If you're looking for conspiracies, maybe the one to look for is the one that seeks a life appointment for judges dismissing concerns based on fact and history. Roe, and virtually all law related to privacy rights, are at risk.