Why Roe Is About Privacy

They don’t call it your “privates” for nothing. Who knows the original reason we went from naked apes to covering up the naughty bits. I’m sure there are many theories from evolution and survival to keeping warm to original sin to religious shame or whatever. It doesn’t really matter because NOW it’s a private area. And that’s just the exterior. The interior is even MORE PRIVATE because it was covered up by a nice, neat exterior long, long ago. After all, who wants to mate with a creature that has its guts on the outside?

Yes, there is a protective practicality to our skin that keeps everything nicely ordered, clean and safe out of prying eyes, a trait inherited from the cell walls themselves that keep cells neatly intact too. Sure Nature does let some creatures peer into each other such as dolphins who can basically do a sonogram any time they want to or canines who can smell things you’ve eaten or even diseases you are carrying. We are not so keen and what you see is what you get for the most part. Up to when the first pregnancy tests were invented, the art of telling if someone was pregnant was pretty hilarious and I suggest you Google it.

Before a woman has any observable “baby bump” in week 12–16 of pregnancy, what is happening inside her is entirely her business and not a matter of public record unless she wants it to be. This is codified in our HIPAA laws protecting the privacy of ALL medical information, all information about the interior of the person and all health metrics. This is a case where our laws nicely conform to Nature’s own mandate of privacy mentioned above. However, it should be noted the HIPAA laws are not as strong as the fundamental protections against unwarranted search and seizures so they can’t really prevent an overzealous DA armed with a questionable State Law from obtaining such records.

The public has no rights to my medical records, procedures, test results, etc. and my doctor is strictly regulated from sharing these as much as a psychologist is from disclosing conversations or a lawyer with attorney-client privileges. Of course, there are exceptions when a potential crime is discussed. And that’s exactly what anti-abortionists have labeled abortion. A murder, in fact. Pretty much the worst crime we have.