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28-year-old author and blogger from Boston, MA.

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Is Murder Protected by the Right to Privacy?

By Matt Margolis | December 3, 2002

Yesterday, in one of my classes, there was a presentation made by a student about privacy. Beyond the fact that I generally disagreed with his opinions and allegations, there was one comment he made which bothered me a great deal - casually inserted into his scripted presentation was the comment that privacy rights “reached a pinnacle with Roe v. Wade” and has since reached an ultimate low with the recent passing of the Homeland Security Bill. Essentially, what he was saying was that the right to have an abortion is equal to the government granting it’s citizens full rights to privacy.

Why is it that people think abortion is about privacy? The unnatural termination of a life is a right guaranteed by the right to privacy? How do you figure? Regardless of the reasons behind it, an abortion is when an expectant mother terminates her pregnancy. Left alone, that fetus becomes a child - yet people seem to think that as long as a child is in utero, it is merely a faceless “choice” that a woman can make - to keep or not to keep - and that right to choose which is guised as “reproductive freedom.”

Were Susan Smith or Andrea Yates exercising their rights to privacy when they murdered their children? Should we call those incidents a postpartum abortion and make these woman icons of women’s rights? Why not? If a woman can end the life of her child while it is still the womb, what makes the situation different when the child is out of the womb? Why is one of those situations an issue of privacy while the other is horrific crime?

Praising the right to have an abortion as the pinnacle of privacy rights is absurd. What a woman does in her bedroom is her business. But the decision to end the life of her child is not - that decision belongs to God.