# On what grounds could Roe v. Wade being overturned? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 15, 2008, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-what-grounds-could-roe-v-wade-being-overturned/463740 "2008-09-15T20:55:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-what-grounds-could-roe-v-wade-being-overturned/463740/21 "2008-09-17T00:50:27Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > The question says it all really. Since the privacy rights expressed in Roe v. Wade have been used in other SCotUS findings that had nothing to do with abortion, would the case that could result in RvWs being overturned likely involve privacy or abortion itself? Griswold vs Connecticut (1966), which found a constitutional right to birth control, preceded the 1972 Roe vs Wade decision. I think it’s possible to overturn Roe vs Wade without overturning Griswold or other privacy decisions. It’s possible to reason that there is a privacy interest, but the State’s interest in protectin the life of a fetus outweighs this privacy interest. ---
**Author:** ![Huerta88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/82dd89/32.png) [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-what-grounds-could-roe-v-wade-being-overturned/463740/22 "2008-09-17T01:33:46Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > With Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and others, I’m pretty sure there were some abortions among them. They just weren’t safe (or illegal). > > Go to any library that has the microfilm of the New York Times (which most college libraries do) and look at the classified ads for any day during the Civil War (most days before and after as well) and you’ll see advertisements for abortion. They don’t use the word- they use such words as “assistance in restoring monthly cycles” or “removal of obstructed menses”, and sometimes it’s a surgeon offering in-office services (surgeons were quite different from physicians or from our concept of surgeons incidentally= more like an EMT who could treat broken bones, perform an amputation, bandage wounds, etc.) and more often it’s a mail-order “tincture” or potion (an abortifacient). It was definitely known, and would have been a century earlier in Philadelphia and NYC as well, where the procedure was practiced by a wide range of people ranging from surgeons to mid-wives to apothecaries. (From 1591-1869 the Catholic church did not recognize it as murder until the [116th day from conception](http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist_c.htm).) Great. All the posts saying “abortion didn’t exist” (wrong) or “abortion did exist and was not illegal” miss the point. What the Framers would have scratched their colelctive heads about was the very different proposition that the document they had just drafted not only **allowed** or **might be consistent with** abortion (known since the days of Hippocrates), but that the Constitution **disallowed any and all restrictions** on abortion, period, full stop. That’s not in there, nor is an absolute right to bodily privacy such as would require “compelling state interest.” Other aspects of “privacy” that are indirectly recognized in the Constitution are not absolute. Your premises or person may be searched, but not unlawfully; you may end up having your private property taken for public use, but not without just compensation; you may even end up involuntarily quartering Hessians in your house, in a time of war, “in a manner prescribed by law.” Gee, none of those seem consistent with an **absolute and inflexible** right to bodily or property privacy (and the Da Vinci right to absolute control over your uterus was apparently too difficult to allude to, even indirectly as with the above limited “privacy type” rights, which could be extensively intruded on? You need “penumbras” to find it? Second, regardless of whether the Framers thought an early-stage fetus was a “person” or that killing it was “murder,” it’s a non-sequiter. Many things that fall short of “murder of a fully-fledged person” are made illegal, and the Constitution has no problem with those. Hey, why can’t I shoot dogs or mutilate a family member’s corpse or pay someone to kill me with my consent? Because you can’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-what-grounds-could-roe-v-wade-being-overturned/463740.md?page=1)