Ginsburg and the right to privacy

David Limbaugh:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart illustrates the moral depths and quagmires of irrationality to which the political and cultural left in this country have descended.

In Carhart, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, a limited congressional ban on partial-birth abortion that was shot down by lower federal courts.

What stands out in Ginsburg's opinion is not her condemnatory legal critique of the majority opinion, but her philosophical/political assertions. While she pays lip service to the supposedly conflicting interests of the government in "safeguarding a woman's health" versus "preserving and promoting fetal life," it is clear that neither of those hold a candle to her interest in promoting "a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature."

Much of Ginsburg's opinion reads like a feminist manifesto straight from the National Organization for Women. One gets the sense that she believes what is really at stake in the abortion debate is not the vindication of "some generalized notion of privacy." No, this is purely and simply a power struggle on behalf of women pursuing their presumably unrealized quest for complete equality.

Ginsburg and those of like mind obviously regard any restrictions on abortion as threatening to women. Such restrictions, in their view, proceed from a regressive mindset "when women were 'regarded as the center of home and family life, with attendant special responsibilities that precluded full and independent legal status under the Constitution.'"

...

Restrictions on what women can do with their bodies are not uncommon. The law does not permit them to use their bodies for prostitution for example. Nor are they permitted to inject or ingest certain prohibited substances.

When you read Kennedy's majority opinion describing the procedure you also have to question liberals' revulsion at the treatment of detainees at Gitmo or Abu Ghraid, for none of them were treated as inhumanely as the product of this procedure.