On Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court, and privacy: the governed do NOT derive their powers from the consent of the government

Poor Clarence Thomas. On May 6, after the draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, the Supreme Court justice whined, “We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.” He — like at least one of Thomas’s colleagues — knows something about bullying and harassment. Just ask Anita Hill. Or Christine Blasey Ford. But Thomas seems to have conveniently forgotten one of the essentials of a functioning democracy: neither should the institutions bully the people.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The governed do NOT derive their powers from the consent of the government. However, that seems to be Thomas’s attitude. And despite his boohooing, it’s the government these days — especially the conservative justices of the Supreme Court — doing the bullying, particularly of women and girls of child-bearing age.

But Justice Thomas isn’t the only one on the Supreme Court who appears to think that institutions are more deserving of protections than the People are. Shortly after the leak of the draft opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, in a spectacular display of hypocrisy, decried the loss of confidentiality during preliminary arguments among justices and the absolute necessity of making legal decisions in private. His wailing about the loss of privacy is especially tone-deaf considering that those same conservative justices were and are debating and apparently intend to take from the People the very thing he moaned about losing: the right to privacy, specifically, a woman’s right to make enormously personal decisions about her own body, her own family, and her own life without the knowledge or interference of the government.

There’s a stench of moral superiority drifting out of their complaints, much like the sanctimonious displays of those holding a vigil in public and making a spectacle of praying for the souls of those with whom they disagree. Of course, Jesus had something to say about people like that: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.” Instead, he instructs us, when you’re going to pray, go in your closet and shut the door. And pray where no one else sees or hears you. Do it in private.

That absence or loss of privacy — whether chosen or imposed on us by a government or corporation or others — is a loss we should vigorously resist. Maintaining one’s privacy, especially when confronted every day with a deluge of ever-smaller, easier-to-conceal, and more widespread and insidious technology is no easy task. Sadly, most of us are all too ready to surrender our privacy and even have willingly and unwittingly invited spies and eavesdroppers into our homes, our cars, and our pockets. Alexa constantly listens in on our conversations. Google continuously monitors our online activity. Facebook lets our “friends” know when we’re logged in. Our cell phones perpetually know or want to know our physical location. The swipe of a credit card is monitored by our bank, who sends us a message if the charge occurs somewhere they don’t think we should be. Cameras are pointed at us at ATMs, intersections, Walmart checkouts, parking lots, and even from our own laptops and phones. Most companies have a Privacy Policy, which they make public, ostensibly to reassure customers how and if their personal info is being used, stored, and/or shared. Of course, it’s much more likely that this policy is mostly meant to protect companies from lawsuits and to give us a false sense of security that we can actually keep our private lives private.

Granted, some people, even many people, consider privacy antithetical to a healthy social life. These are the ones who are natural and obsessive gossips. They love to talk but not just about themselves and, in my experience, not about subjects that enrich our lives, such as art, history, philosophy, literature, science, even politics and sports. Instead, without a second thought about consequences or the resulting inability to honestly examine their own lives, they happily pass on, in idle conversation, a suspicion about the neighbors’ marriage, an inkling about an imminent foreclosure, scuttlebutt regarding some local infidelity, a jab at someone’s hygiene or parenting methods, a rumor about an impending bankruptcy, or a hunch concerning abuse or pregnancy. These habits, particularly when accepted by those around us, make identifying and resisting the more serious and dangerous invasions of privacy even more difficult.

While I’ve been tempted to get off the grid but haven’t as of yet, I keep a low profile in the small Minnesota town where I now live. As I’ve gotten older, I protect my privacy with a determination and vigor that may make people think I’m selfish, stuck-up, maybe even anti-social. Of course, my worries about invasions of privacy — as well as those of Chief Justice Roberts — are small potatoes compared to those hanging over the heads and bodies of women in this increasingly rabid and malicious political environment.