The U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and its companion case of Doe v. Bolton are known for not only legalizing abortion in all 50 states, but for doing so with terrifying scope and reach.
The basis for such a decision came from the so-called right to privacy found in the Fourteenth Amendment. This interpretation of the Constitution has been sharply criticized, with claims made that perhaps the right to privacy was created out of the earlier Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut.
The application of one’s right to privacy expanded greatly to allow a mother to abort her own child, with Roe coming less than 10 years after the Griswold decision.
And so a Court decision with such a lasting impact as to prevent the births of more than 56 million Americans was justified by a right which isn’t even explicitly stated in the Constitution.
The Court has ruled that we do have the right to privacy. Should that be the basis for killing one’s own child, though?
With regards to privacy as it applies to sexual intercourse between two consenting adults in their own bedroom, few, if any, would want to get involved. That couple has a right to their privacy there.
If couples choose not to become pregnant, they have the option of acquiring birth control. With regards to the Court cases of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods, pro-abortion groups carried signs reading “Not My Boss’s Business” and “No Bosses in My Bedroom.” If this were truly the case, bosses would stay completely out of a woman’s decision to use birth control, and this includes having to provide it. As blogger Matt Walsh mentions:
If your boss is in your bedroom, call the police. Or stop inviting him in. When you ask him to pay for what you do in the bedroom, you are inviting him in. Want him out? Good. Then stop making your birth control into a national headline. Deal with it yourself, privately.
Two main groups against the religious objections of companies to pay for certain forms of birth control include NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood. This means that groups which laud the Court case of Roe v. Wade can’t even accurately apply the right to privacy which was so instrumental to legalizing abortion.
Regardless whether a sexually active couple has used birth control, once a woman becomes pregnant, the situation no longer merely involves two consenting adults. An unborn child is certainly not an adult (though he or she is no less deserving of the right to life) and had no forethought with regards to being conceived.
If you want to have sex and use birth control, that’s your business. But you want to abort your child? That doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not going to get involved in your sex or or birth control decisions. It is, however, my duty to protect the lives of the vulnerable, defenseless and innocent unborn children when nobody else will speak for them. As pro-lifers we cannot just stand by and allow deaths of those who are innocent to occur in the misguided name of privacy.
