Problems with Roe V. Wade (Right to Privacy)

Problems with Roe v Wade

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Most opinion polls, we hear, indicate that a majority of Americans do not want to see the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision overturned. Who knows if these opinion polls are accurate. Even if they are, however, there is one statistic that I don’t need a poll to know -- namely, the fact that a much greater majority of Americans have probably not read the Roe vs. Wade majority decision. If they did read it and could see that the entire logic of the argument if based on a fallacy, they may not think the way they do.

In 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun argued that women have a constitutional right to abortion because they have a right to privacy. This, or course, assumes two things – first, that there exists a right to privacy in the Constitution in the first place (in an earlier decision, the court had argued that there is such a constitutional right even though nothing of the sort is ever mentioned in the Constitution). Secondly, it assumes that abortion is a matter of privacy.

Now, obviously, actions that affect other people are not matters of privacy. I cannot fire a gun at someone and then complain that it was my private decision to shoot someone when I am arrested. This, of course, means that the court must rule on whether unborn children are indeed persons. Of course, at the outset of the decision, Justice Blackmun speaks about what a deep and unanswerable question the personhood of a human fetus is, and how the court could never take a position on it. What does he then do? Exactly what he said could not be done. He takes a position by promising women the right to terminate their children with no fear of state interference, thus effectively denying unborn children the status of personhood that somehow magically comes about as we exit the birth canal.