{"id":1699,"date":"2005-07-13T01:54:43","date_gmt":"2005-07-13T08:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/07\/12\/and-then-theres-griswold\/"},"modified":"2005-07-13T01:54:43","modified_gmt":"2005-07-13T08:54:43","slug":"and-then-theres-griswold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1699","title":{"rendered":"And then there's Griswold"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Roe<\/em> is overturned no doubt the anti-women’s-reproductive-rights zealots would go after Griswold<\/em><\/strong><\/a> next. Their agenda is clear; control women’s reproductive choices by restricting and even outlawing them as much as possible. Women are just baby-assembly-lines to them after all. Overturning not only Roe<\/em> but also Griswold<\/em> would directly intrude within the lives of women and violate their privacy rights<\/strong>, <\/a>and that’s exactly what the anti-choice\/anti-contraception ideologues want more than anything out of this Supreme Court nomination battle.<\/p>\n

ABORTION ISN’T the only reproductive right at stake in the fight over who will replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. There’s also birth control.<\/p>\n

The short version of history is that in 1973, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling said that a woman could terminate her pregnancy because of a constitutional right to privacy.[…]<\/p>\n

A key case in this history is Griswold v. Connecticut, a legal battle over birth control.[…]<\/p>\n

In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that Connecticut’s law was unconstitutional because it trampled the privacy rights of married couples. After the ruling, Connecticut’s married women got access to birth control.<\/p>\n

In the ruling, Justice William O. Douglas wrote, ”We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system.”<\/p>\n

Connecticut was not alone in strapping tough laws on birth control. Massachusetts law banned the sale of contraceptives to unmarried women until 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled that treating married and single people differently was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.<\/p>\n

If members of a newly constituted Supreme Court unravel Roe v. Wade, they could undermine the right to privacy and access to birth control. If this happens, other attacks could gain force, including the current cases of pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions because of their personal values. The nonprofit advocacy organization NARAL Pro-Choice America points to refusals made this year in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.[…]<\/p>\n

Americans should work to make abortion as rare as possible. But if the government revokes women’s abortion rights, it would have excessive control over people’s lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if abortion rights are dismantled and contraception is banned, women’s lives will be completely under the rule of their own government. The precedent would be set; women are birthing chattel on command and women’s sexuality is strictly for procreation–not personal pleasure (and it would be a commodity for men’s enjoyment). Women’ s identity would be solely<\/strong><\/em> synonymous as a means of reproduction. Not to mention there will be more unwanted pregnancies, more unwanted children (which will overwhelm our welfare state–there, that’s what the Republicans get for their anti-woman, anti-choice politics, ha-ha), and more women resorting to all sorts of sometimes horrible and tragic measures in order to end an unwanted pregnancy (ie: fatal back alley abortions, clothes hangers, etc.). Or even giving birth and then abandoning the unfortunate newborn infant in a dumpster. And women who have miscarriages would be investigated in order to make sure that they didn’t induce it on purpose (imagine it, a ‘CSI: Fetus’ and the setting is always within a woman’s uterus).<\/p>\n

Oh but the wealthy women in this country need not fear the prospect of the overturnings of Roe<\/em> and Griswold<\/em>. I’m sure–especially if they’re the wife or girlfriend or daughter of a politician–they’ll always be able to obtain safe abortions and contraception. But for the rest of us (women), our basic fundamental rights as autonomous human beings would be revoked. Not that it matters because hey–we’re women and our rights only exist when they’re convenient for the [mostly male] lawmakers. This is<\/strong><\/em> about women’s privacy and restricting it as much as possible in order to make sure that they ‘fulfill their biological and sacrosanct duties as women<\/em>‘, as the uber-conservative Christian Rightwing’s ideology would have you to believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Roe is overturned no doubt the anti-women’s-reproductive-rights zealots would go after Griswold next. Their agenda is clear; control women’s reproductive choices by restricting and even outlawing them as much as possible. Women are just baby-assembly-lines to them after all. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,118,95,102,27,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights","category-anti-contraceptivesec-zaniness","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-elections-and-politics","category-supreme-court-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}