Monday, March 5, 2012

How Griswold morphed from a right to privacy to a right to public provision

The point Professor Howard P. Kainz wishes the GOP debaters had made in response to Stephanopoulos's question at the January 7th debate. 
The right to privacy, in other words, which prevented a state from banning contraceptives and the government from banning abortion, has evolved into a publicly-applicable right to contracept or abort, which all citizens must respect and support. Even if there are religious objections, religious institutions must not stand in the way of full implementation of these rights, for example, by withholding funding for them, directly or indirectly.  
The citizenry is now ironically pervaded with public imposition of things that used to be considered too private to interfere with. Catholic institutions are being asked to publicly provide support for strictly private contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization; the government wants to include public funding for women’s purely private choices to abort. 
See the whole post at First Things. 

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