How does the right to privacy protect a women’s right to have an abortion or not?
I want to start off by saying that I do not believe in abortion. Human Rights Watch (2005) states that, “Women’s organizations have fought for the right to access safe and legal abortion for decades, and increasingly international human rights law supports their claims; but in most countries and jurisdictions, abortion is allowed at least to save the pregnant woman’s life, or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.” Policy 263 states: “The ACLU holds that every woman, as a matter of her right to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and privacy, should be free to determine whether and when to bear children.”(Epstein, 1981). Abortions has been legal in every state since 1973 since the supreme courts ruled in the Roe v. Wade. In 1992 the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey made it where “abortion as grounded in the general sense of liberty and privacy protected under the constitution: “Constitutional protection of the woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy derives from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It declares that no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law (boundless)”. Under the constitution a woman’s rights to have an abortion are protected, but I believe that abortion is the same as murder. I believe that woman should have the child but give them up for adoption instead of not giving them a chance at life.
Is this a constitutionally valid interpretation of the right to privacy? Why or why not?
Yes because the fourthteenth amendment protects the privacy rights of woman and what they choose to do with their bodies. Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action includes a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy and that this right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy (Justia, 2015).
Boundless. Privacy Rights and Abortion. Retrieved from:
https://www.boundless.com/political-science/textbooks/boundless-political-science-textbook/civil-liberties-4/the-right-to-privacy-36/privacy-rights-and-abortion-203-3450/
Epstein, L. (1981). The impact of ACLU Reproductive Freedom project. Retrieved from:
http://epstein.wustl.edu/research/conferencepapers.1981MPSA.pdf
Human Rights Watch (2005). Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion. Retrieved from:
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/americas/argentina0605/
Justia (2015). Abortion. Retrieved from:
http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-14/31-abortion.html
