An intellectually and morally honest pro-lifer

When was the last time you saw one of those going through confirmation hearings? Probably not since Bork — and of course, the extremism of his views, laid out for the world to see, was what did him in.

An intellectually and morally honest pro-lifer would simply argue that the state’s interest in fetal life outweighs the mother’s privacy interest.

Really? One more nail in the “liberal media” coffin, then. Did they even listen to Brownback, Hatch, Sessions, or Kyl? I don’t even want to think about how long I listened to Brownback rhapsodizing about how Roe “wasn’t settled law” and how Plessy showed that even precedents could be overturned.

The Connecticut statute did not explicitly ban the sale of contraceptives, only the use. The doctor was convicted (and thus had standing to challenge the law) of a statute that said that “‘[a]ny person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender.’” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 480 (1965).

Also, there was really no discussion on bodily integrity; that came later. The Court based its decision primarily on the right of association, and how that (along with the privacy implications inherent in other rights) created a right to privacy in one’s home. Privacy made other rights possible. To have the government intrude on it, by prosecuting for using contraceptive in this case, was intolerable.

I think Jill has it right — admitting that one doubts Griswold would be fatal, so he’s trying to save it; but the conservatives can neither tolerate the procedural nor substantive result: they hate it because it is the very cornerstone of flexible reading of the Constitution, saying that the document has a cohesive theory to it from which can be extrapolated rights that are not in the plain text (especially the kind of rights that permit people’s private conduct to be free of interference by meddling religious bluenoses); and it grants a right to contraception the purpose of which is to separate sex from some of its biological consequences and make it solely about pleasure and intimacy. Alito I think rightly realizes that the second can’t be changed, and instead wants to say that Griswold reaches its conclusion through different reasoning, invalidating both the result and methodology of Roe.