The Ol’ Dirty takes on the parental notification issue in an editorial yesterday. Some of you may remember a similar editorial from about two months ago addressing the same subject.

I’ve always tried to avoid writing directly about abortion law since it is unquestionably the least productive and most polarizing of subjects to write about. Both sides are dominated and largely represented by extremists, much to the detriment of civil debate and political progress.

But with that said, I’ve always found the pro-choice movement majority’s inconsistent treatment of the implied right to privacy to be one of the more hypocritical (drink!) positions taken by either side. To use the Emerald as an example, their Editorial Board supports the right of a 15 year old girl to have an abortion without the knowledge of her parents. But one year ago they were adament in opposing individual rights in Oregon as they applied to adults. According to their logic, parental notification laws, which are overwhelmingly supported by a majority of Americans, should be unconstitutional under the implied right to privacy. Meanwhile sex shows, which are not widely supported, should not be protected by similar rights. As I pointed out then, this is an inconsistent position to take. It essentially reduces the implied right to privacy to nothing more than an implied right to have an abortion or take contraception. Yet another reason why rights should be written into the Constitution, not divined from the bench.

It would be interesting to see if, with its new composition, the Emerald’s Editorial Board has altered its view on the legality of sex shows.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 09:15 by Ian and is filed under Elections, Ol' Dirty Emerald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.