"Was the “Roe” majority correct in relying on the above cases? Some constitutional scholars claim that all of those cases taken together delineate a sphere of interests which the court now grouped and denominated as “privacy.” That privacy is implicit in the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment. The individual has the right to make the fundamental decisions that shape family life: whom to marry, whether and when to have children, and with what values to rear those children. [T]he family unit does not simply c0-exist with our constitutional system; it is an integral part of it.” (Heymann, Barzelay , pp.772-772). In reply, it has been noted that “roe v. Wade” may not be seen as a vindication of the family: in fact, it is profoundly hostile to it. “The family unit which they say is an integral part of our constitutional system was rejected by the Abortion Cases…”(Noonan, 1979, p.21). Jane Roe, the challenger of the Texas statute, was single and to decide her case on the basis of marital privacy was not apposite. As emphasized by Noonan, “Roe v. Wade” is “a massive departure from the long line of cases… correctly [portrayed] as a vindication of the family” (Noonan, 1979, pp. 21-22) Second, as pointed out by the same scholar, all the precedents “treated family rights as having a natural basis superior to the law of the state… All of these cases rested on the supposition that the family rights bring protected were those of persons, and that these persons could not be unmade at will by the state” (Noonan, 1984, pp. 672-673). The “Roe” decision was thus schizoid: “[A]t the same time that it invoked such precedents (…) the Court, when treating of the unborn, felt free to impose its own notions of reality” by denying the humanness and the personhood of the fetus (Ibidem, p. 673)."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

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pp.28-29

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade