It's not just overturning Roe v. Wade that the right wingers want. It's eliminating the right to privacy which the Supreme Court established in 1965 in a case called Griswold v. Connecticut. In that case, a doctor was arrested for distributing contraceptives. Yes, contraceptives.
In a column in the Reverend Moon's paper on Monday, Bruce Fein, (he's a Republican lawyer who is always on cable TV who really creeps me out), trashed the right to privacy. In fact, he equates the right to privacy with a liberal political agenda. And of course, Bruce Fein has to haul out all the old right wing chestnuts to attack the right to privacy:
If the assertion means individuals are crowned with privacy rights to do anything that gratifies, then polygamy, same-sex "marriage," access to child pornography, or using addictive drugs are constitutional rights.Fein worked in the Reagan Justice Department with young John Roberts we learned from Bloomberg. We also learned that Mr. Roberts doesn't believe in the right to privacy either:
In a Dec. 11, 1981, memo to his boss, Attorney General William French Smith, Roberts referred to a comment by former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold that derided the ``so-called `right to privacy''' that formed the basis of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide.Roberts is heading toward confirmation. That means the right to privacy is in trouble. It's been on his agenda...and the agenda of the hard core right wingers for decades.
Griswold, also a former dean of Harvard Law School, was ``arguing as we have that such an amorphous right is not to be found in the Constitution,'' Roberts wrote in the memo, among papers released by the National Archives and Records Administration in advance of his Senate confirmation hearings set to begin Sept. 6.
Robert, then a special assistant to Smith, attached a draft thank-you letter that he recommended the attorney general send praising Griswold for sounding ``some of the themes I have been addressing recently'' about courts ``restricting themselves to the proper judicial function.''....The documents released by the National Archives also include a ``Draft Article on Judicial Restraint'' stating that courts should not ``discern such an abstraction in the Constitution'' as the ``right to privacy.''
The Supreme Court invoked that right in 1965 to overturn a Connecticut law that outlawed contraception. The draft article said ``the broad range of rights which are now alleged to be `fundamental' by litigants'' bear ``only the most tenuous connection to the Constitution.''
Neither Roberts' name nor initials are on the document, though the same box contains a Sept. 30, 1981, memo to Roberts from Bruce E. Fein, an associate deputy attorney general, that suggested inserting a paragraph into ``your draft article on judicial activism.''
This is a guess, just a guess, but I bet there are some men in America, probably in Red States, probably who voted for Bush, who have benefited greatly from the right to privacy established in Griswold. Those contraceptives probably have prevented an awful lot of messy situations from occurring. And, Roe v. Wade probably got some of the guys out of a jam, too. In other words, all those men out there who think this is just a lot of talk about women's rights, better start paying attention.
Most Americans didn't believe they would get a Supreme Court that would take away their rights. But that's what the right wing theocrats wanted....and that's what Bush and Rove are giving them.
