Freedom and Risk

[LittleFuzzy]

*sighs* I'm not trying to link anything to "the GSB" yet, I'm trying to get some common ground established. And I'm done with the wild flailing since I can't get even a hint of acknowledgement from you that there might be any validity in a word I write, your lack of lawyerliness notwithstanding.

[Aimless]

(tl;dr version at end of post though it does not contain much explanation; we do have common ground, but it's provisional)

*sighs* I'm not trying to link anything to "the GSB" yet, I'm trying to get some common ground established. And I'm done with the wild flailing since I can't get even a hint of acknowledgement from you that there might be any validity in a word I write, your lack of lawyerliness notwithstanding.

I'm sorry, I may have gotten distracted and forgotten the initial part of the exchange:

You're right, it's completely unacceptable. It's also completely irrelevant because your example is not analogous in any meaningful way to stopping businesses from selling 16+ oz. sodas. I ask about implementation and costs because you can't think of any way to implement that idea without severely and cruelly violating people's right to privacy, because you can't think of any way to make it cost-effective, and because there are better options available.

Ie. the unavoidable violation of the right to privacy would be a problem, for me (unavoidable beforehand, not simply after the fact), in addition to forcing the law on someone's body against their will, not being cost-effective and there being better options. The latter two have to do with facts/evidence/reasoning, while the first are, to me, problems in principle.

As I see it, it is the first two your comparison relies on:

Connecticut's law wasn't preventing people from avoiding conception if they didn't want it, not forcing them to do anything, it was just making it harder to do so since the cultural gestalt was opposed to people avoiding conception. It wasn't severely and cruelly violating their right to privacy, since apparently forbidding commercial transactions of goods doesn't count as such.

I agree that the case is analogous in the sense that the law did not force someone to do something etc; however, I disagree that the case is analogous because the statute in question does violate the right to privacy--were it to be enforced--and was found to be unconstitutional for precisely that reason.

Had the use of contraception really been a crime, then I could perhaps go along with it being a crime for eg. a business to aid and abet. Had the law been formulated strictly as a restriction on eg. the sale of condoms and OCPs because they cause cancer or something, then I may have been able to agree in theory, although I know that a thorough analysis would show contraception to be safer and more cost-effective than the alternatives. If it were simply about "forbidding commercial transactions of goods" then yes I would have to concede the analogy.

But that was not the case. The second part of the law could not have been taken in isolation and therefore construed as not being a violation of the right to privacy. The part of the law that was applicable to the providers was predicated entirely on the illegitimate criminalisation of contraceptive use which was a violation of the right to privacy. On the face of it, the first part of the law was not the issue before the court and the court's decision may perhaps be seen as overreaching or as judicial activism; however the second part of the law creates an equivalence to the first part and I can't see how the second part can be considered in isolation. While the judges may have been wrong, they obviously considered the question of what law they had to examine as well as the conditions under which they may have come to a different ruling (see quotes).

If I were to agree that it could have been considered in isolation as strictly being a law for the regulation of the commercial side eg. for public health reasons, ie. the regulation of what services/goods may be offered by whom to whom in which ways in order to reduce cancer, then perhaps we could say we have some common ground and move forward. I have conceded that hypothetical possibility.

I may be misreading your posts again. I hope my understanding will grow as the discussion progresses. But, for the moment, the tl;dr version is: I disagree that the Griswold case is analogous to the category of laws I may be able to accept in theory. This category contains real world laws where government--at the state and federal level--regulates eg. the sale of things that can be ingested, and I put it to you that the continued existence of such laws suggest that the SCOTUS at least does not think that the Griswold case is analogous to such regulation. Its position seems to be that there is no real and general right to privacy--or an equivalent--in commercial activity, that there is no blanket right to freedom of contract, and that states are within their right to regulate such activity eg. for reasons of public health.

Of course SC rulings have little to do with views I've developed while twiddling my thumbs in an armchair, but they do help me elucidate what I think and why. In closing: I don't endorse the GSB, but I understand why it exists and how it can exist without being an egregious violation of human rights or of the US constitution.

[Lewkowski]

I'm pretty depressed that someone said tl;dr on this forum.

[Aimless]

For the record IRC is proving more helpful I may or may not be approaching Fuzzy's position

[GGT]

I think this is the most baffling bit of logorrhea I've seen in quite some time. Individual liberty and self-determination have absolutely nothing to do with clinical science, ulcers, bacterium, or endocrine malfunctions. There is absolutely no logical connection between these disparate concepts, and no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from this line of reasoning.

I am completely at a loss.

The "connection" was that today's legislators, concerned with public health, often try to use medical science to fit their behavioral initiatives. It's their line of reasoning that doesn't make sense --- making conclusions that obesity/diabetes can be changed by banning large soda sizes --- that's just as faulty as saying spicy food causes stomach ulcers. The more subtle "connections" between liberty/self-determination and certain restrictions is related to public knowledge of medical science, obesity and diabetes, and if they readily accept Mayor Bloomberg's proposals. Most people probably find it as nonsensical as banning cupcakes because they're high in sugar content....

It is not and has never been on legislative glob, it's a judicial glob. From the perspective of jurisprudence they are *roughly* equivalent because there aren't specific reproductive rights or ingestive rights in this system, there's the right to privacy protecting control over one's own body, and that covers all those areas.

Then it's legislative "creep"? It's a pretty *rough* equivalent to compare physician-prescribed birth control and professional medical therapies, with ingesting super-sized sodas at restaurants. I'm under the impression that judiciary said reproductive rights weren't just private control of one's body, but included privacy rights between the doctor/patient. Correct me if that's wrong.

Anyway, medical care provided by physicians is an entirely different sphere than "food". Even if doctors make dietary recommendations to their patients and the public, or have oversight on restaurant health hazards through State Health Boards, it's mostly surrounding food safety and food-borne illnesses...not the food item itself. Only a couple of urban center legislators have tried to ban certain foods for "public health" reasons, with recommendations from their friendly appointed physicians.