Timothy C. May wrote:
Some legal scholars are claiming that there is no provision in the Constitution guaranteeing anonymity of purchases, and, indeed, a growing number of purchases can no longer be anonymous--guns, explosives, chemicals of various sorts, etc. How long before _all_ transactions must be recorded, True Names revealed, etc.? [snip] The issue hit when abortion advocates argued that a "woman's right to privacy" allowed abortions. However, none of the enumerated rights made this obvious. Bork has opined that no right to privacy can be inferred from the Constitution. (And I always thought the "woman's right to privacy" argument for abortion was flaky. Accepting such an argument, wouldn't infanticide be equally protected by a woman's right to privacy?)
A perfect invitation for rational argument. You obviously refer to the privacy/right to destroy your own personal property, which you pretty much have in the U.S., Constitution or no. So the issue above is whether the unborn baby is personal property (in the sense that I can chop off my hair or even my ear if I want to), or the child is personal property. The child issue has been settled effectively for many years now, but the controversy remains on the unborn. At least some of this privacy discussion would be better presented from another angle - how deep would the feds want to probe into the common folks' lives, what techniques would be employed, how would the serious folks get around those things, and where would the greatest (and most serious) amount of actions converge to flare up in the public consciousness (media, internet, etc.)?