The ad, which featured footage of a bombed abortion clinic and a victim in a wheelchair, accused Judge John Roberts Jr. of siding with clinic bombers and having an ideology that would "excuse" their attacks.

What Mr. Roberts actually did, on behalf of the administration of the first President George Bush, was to write a brief supporting the right of people to protest at abortion clinics, not bomb them. His argument was not only reasonable, but also exposed a fundamental problem in the way Naral Pro-Choice America has framed the abortion issue.

The case involved a law forbidding conspiracies against a "class of persons," which was enacted during Reconstruction to protect blacks from the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Roberts argued (and the Supreme Court agreed) that the law didn't apply to the protesters at abortion clinics because they weren't discriminating against all women, just the women seeking abortions.

If that argument sounds reactionary, it's only because Naral and other groups have worked so long to make abortion a civil rights issue, presenting it as women's fight for freedom against an oppressive patriarchy.

Um, that's pretty much how it is, even though there are numerous Vichywomen working with the Man. Patriarchy is a social construct, not a biological construct.

The abortion debate, unlike the civil rights debate, can't be resolved by appealing to any widely held moral or legal principles. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court discovered a right in the Constitution for pregnant women to be left alone by the government. But that just ducked the question - what about the fetus's right to be left alone? - and angered huge numbers of Americans.

Actually, the Constitution recognizes all kinds of rights to be "left alone by the government." Roe v. Wade argues that the  First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments put together protect a right to personal privacy, and that this right had already been recognized by many prior decisions. I'll paste a part of the Roe decision explaining this at the end of this post. 

But for the moment let's step away from examining clauses under a microscope and look at the bigger issue of political liberty. The whole point of it, and the raison d'etre of the Bill of Rights, is the notion (revolutionary in the 18th century) that citizens of the U.S. were not subjects whose lives and property could be messed with on the capricious whims of the sovereign. The underlying philosophy of our government is that citizens are to be free of interference by government unless government has a compelling reason to countermand the free will of citizens. And even then, government must jump through various hoops--the due process of law thing--before requiring a citizen to do something he or she does not want to do.

For example, the "people to be secure in their persons" business in the Fourth Amendment requires prosecutors to get a court order to compel a suspect to so much as hand over a few cells of his body tissue for a DNA test. This is, in effect, a "right to privacy," is it not? Righties like Tierney swear the word privacy doesn't apply. I say righties like Tierney are just being anal.

If you really want to be anal, you could argue that the Fourteenth Amendment, which defines citizens as  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,"  means that fetii are not citizens. Thus, they are not obligated to equal protection under the law. Why it is that all these "strict construction" types don't notice this is beyond me.

The argument that women are required to surrender their autonomy upon impregnation is based on the fuzzy-headed notion that the product of pregnancy is a person from the moment of conception. Anti-privacy philosophy sanctifies human DNA instead of human sentience and autonomy. This is something I've discussed before; here and here, for example.

Tierney lumbers along in his usual muddle-headed way, calling himself "pro-choice" but planting his discussion entirely around supposed rights of a fetus while implying that "rights of women" is a rad-fem socialist-academic theory rejected by sensible folk.

But enough Tierney. I said I was going to defend NARAL, so here goes--some readers of my previous NARAL post seemed to think I was arguing that Roberts's prior record on abortion was off limits or that we lefties should pull punches for fear of offending people. Hardly.

My point was that we on the Left have something powerful on our side--the truth--and we're fools not to use it. The Right has to deceive, and smear, because that's all they can do. Why get into the mud and play on their terms? That's counterproductive, to say the least.

See also Media Girl:

[The NARAL ad flap] got me thinking (again) about a problem I have with political ads in general:

They totally suck.

These Beltway agencies just crank these pieces of rhetorical shit out their pipelines like Twinkies. All the same. All seeming to have a solid shape on the outside. All full of mushy garbage of no value on the inside.

I'd like to see some liberal/progressive politicians and causes to hire someone else to do their ads. Look at the ads for The Island or The Constant Gardener. A lot more fucking interesting than the same old melodramatic music, the same urgent voice, the same on-screen graphics.... Who's getting paid to make this crap, anyway?

As far as the factuality of the ad is concerned--and here's the "defending NARAL" part--please see Bitch, Ph.D.

Other business: Our own Julie O. will take over Haloscan Queen monitor duties in my absence. Thank you to all who volunteered! And please don't overlook Dave Evad's pen pal request, as explained here.

Here's the promised snip of Roe v. Wade:

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, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8 -9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 484 -485; 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, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 -542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S., at 453 -454; id., at 460, 463-465 [410 U.S. 113, 153]   (WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944); and child rearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.

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. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive. The [410 U.S. 113, 154]   Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.