Democrats have a schizophrenic approach to a woman’s right to privacy

I think there’s a good argument to be made that the Democrats’ Equality Act violates a woman’s constitutional right to privacy.

The basis for unlimited abortion in America is a woman’s right to privacy. It says so in Roe v. Wade, with its talk of emanations and penumbras:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, [citation omitted]; in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, [citations omitted]; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, [citation omitted];; in the Ninth Amendment, id., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, [citation omitted]. These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” [citation omitted], are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.

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This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Let me restate this: The United States Supreme Court has held, and never backed away from, the assertion that the constitutional right of privacy is so pivotal — a woman’s control over her body’s integrity so complete — that it extends to snuffing out a life.

Democrats have embraced this as the true holy grail of their politics. Nine times out of ten, the Democrat-voting women I have known over the years (which is nine out of ten of the women I have known) are single-issue voters: It’s all about abortion for them. No wonder Nancy Pelosi said abortion is “sacred ground.” Without it, they lose women voters.

That’s been the case since 1973.

Now think about the Democrats’ beloved Equality Act, which the House passed and which is going to the Senate. Here is how Congress.gov sums up the Act:

This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation.

The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.

The bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

Again, let me restate this: Under the Democrats’ new holy grail of the Equality Act, biological men who, because of mental illness or opportunism, claim they are women, have unlimited, mandatory, government-backed access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, jails, hospital rooms, waxing salons (think pubic waxing), and jails. All of these are places in which women’s bodily integrity is at its most vulnerable because they are unclothed. There is nothing more private than the human body. Unless we are exhibitionists or in prison, we save our bodies for those whom we specifically invite into that private realm. And even in prison, women have the right not to be visually or physically molested.

So answer me this: How in the world does the Equality Act not conflict with Roe v. Wade’s explicit holding that women have a constitutional right to privacy that extends to their bodies? With the Equality Act, which is based upon no science whatsoever, it’s no longer a woman’s body and a woman’s choice. The government has coopted that choice, leaving women helpless in the presence of biological men.

Image: Pro-abortion rally in St. Paul, MN, 2019 (cropped), by Lorie Shaull