The thing is, you pretty much have to put a lot of this under the rubric of privacy. Keep in mind that a number of individual freedoms are derived from the general right to privacy.

--|PW|--

Is it even in the Constitution?

Great post, and no privacy is never mentioned in the Constitution.

Privacy = secrets? That doesn't compute for me.

To me privacy = individual liberty. There may be secrets that are being hidden. There may not be. Either is irrelevant because privacy means it's nobody else's damn business to begin with.

Privacy is a privilege to be sacrificed for patriotism. At least that seems to be the dominant thinking. If you want privacy, that must mean you have something to hide.

I would agree with you, but after the Patriot Act, privacy is seen as a security threat. That's why the FBI must be able to look at what books you've checked out of the library, or be able to snoop through your home without telling you. That's why your luggage is searched on the assumption that you're a terrorist.

I wish it weren't so.

This is the last place where I expected people to demand an originalist reading of the Constitution!

Alright, if you're curious about the right to privacy, I encourage you to read Griswold v. Connecticutt, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), which found that access to contraceptives was part of a married couple's right to privacy.

Here's the money quote:

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." [citation omitted]

--|PW|--

I'm setting up a project right now that combines two issues:

Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty.

Privacy doesn't begin to cover the issue, though I believe we have the right because it is not limited by the Constitution. This is not about keeping secrets, or modesty. This is about whether women are people or not.

Morgaine-ism© #8

"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."

Part of the old-line conservative movement was the Tenth Amendment which the wingnuts have conveniently forgotten and I would say this is powerful insofar as privacy, but I do agree the issue is whether females are humans.

Largely because women were not fully human at the time the Constitution was written and blacks were only 60-percent human - it says so in the Constitution, the humanity of non-whites and females has always been a bit tentative.

I think women, especially, want this clarified and not all of them frame the issue identically. Feminism is not monolithic.

But many of us do think the issues is larger than the privacy issue.

That is, I might have a spacecraft in my belly, but there are sound strategies for keeping little aliens out of it, and they work 99% of the time.