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Florida constitution and precedent demand upholding women's privacy on abortion decisions
Florida constitution and precedent demand upholding women's privacy on abortion decisionsApologies, but someone needs to deliver the bad news that we may be about to lose our right to privacy.
Privacy or “the right to be let alone,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it almost a hundred years ago, is “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized [people].”
In 1980, the people of Florida secured protection for their privacy with an amendment to their state constitution. It is Article 1, Section 23: “Every natural person has the right to be left alone and free from governmental intrusion into his private life except as otherwise provided herein...”
Five years later, our Supreme Court noted that the provision was phrased in broad terms “in order to make the privacy right as strong as possible.” And nine years after its adoption, the Supreme Court, unanimously, ruled that freedom from government intrusion into “one’s private life” applied to women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.
Now, the justices of the Florida Supreme Court are deciding how a legislative 15-week abortion ban (which triggers a 6-week ban, which in practical terms is a total ban) can possibly be legal when there is a constitutional prohibition on intrusions into a woman’s private life.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has suggested how the hypocrisy can be accomplished: ignore three decades of precedent and shrink the meaning of privacy to “informational privacy” only – so that it restricts information government collects and disseminates about a person.
That approach, however, comes with a stiff price for every Floridian, namely the loss of constitutional protection for many areas of personal freedom.
Privacy or “the right to be let alone,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it almost a hundred years ago, is “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized [people].”
In 1980, the people of Florida secured protection for their privacy with an amendment to their state constitution. It is Article 1, Section 23: “Every natural person has the right to be left alone and free from governmental intrusion into his private life except as otherwise provided herein...”
Five years later, our Supreme Court noted that the provision was phrased in broad terms “in order to make the privacy right as strong as possible.” And nine years after its adoption, the Supreme Court, unanimously, ruled that freedom from government intrusion into “one’s private life” applied to women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.
Now, the justices of the Florida Supreme Court are deciding how a legislative 15-week abortion ban (which triggers a 6-week ban, which in practical terms is a total ban) can possibly be legal when there is a constitutional prohibition on intrusions into a woman’s private life.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has suggested how the hypocrisy can be accomplished: ignore three decades of precedent and shrink the meaning of privacy to “informational privacy” only – so that it restricts information government collects and disseminates about a person.
That approach, however, comes with a stiff price for every Floridian, namely the loss of constitutional protection for many areas of personal freedom.