In a thread over in the Pit, there’s an interesting debate going on about parental notification/consent laws for minors seeking abortions. In the course of the discussion, someone posted the following:
I found this really intriguing. I know there’s quite a lot of debate among constitutional scholars about the Supreme Court rulings that have supported the notion of a constitutionally-protected right to privacy, and I’m not necessarily trying to open that up, at least not in the sense of “Is there or isn’t there such a right?”
And I’m definitely not just trying to start another thread for hashing out the abortion issue again.
Instead, I was wondering whether it was truly impossible to come up with some kind of consensus on one or more issues that were universally-considered to be intensely private. I guess what I have in mind is a kind of hypothetical question: “If you were writing the Bill of Rights to include a right to privacy, what matters would be encompassed by that right?” Also: “What sort of limits or restrictions on this right would you stipulate?” (as with the libel, slander and other restrictions on free speech)
This may not be the most felictously-worded OP in the history of GD, but I’m hoping you folks will sort of take the ball and run with it, anyway. 