Topic: Marital Privacy, Child Education & Abortion
Senator: Feinstein
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
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FEINSTEIN: Now, yesterday you said this: "I agree with the Griswold court's conclusion that marital privacy extends to contraception and availability of that. The courts since Griswold has grounded the privacy right discussed in that case in the liberty interest protected under the due process clause." Do you think that right of privacy that you're talking about there extends to single people, as well as married people?
ROBERTS: The courts held that in the Eisenstat case, which came shortly after Griswold, largely under principles of equal protection, and I don't have any quarrel with that conclusion in Eisenstat.
FEINSTEIN: OK. Do you think that that same right extends beyond family choices then about a child's education?
ROBERTS: Well, that's where it actually got started 80 years ago in the earliest cases. Meyer and Pierce involved questions about how to raise children, whether you could teach them a foreign language, whether you could send them to a private school. And those decisions are really what started that body of law.
FEINSTEIN: I have another question I could ask but you won't answer it, unless...
SPECTER: Give it a try, Dianne. Go ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
FEINSTEIN: Does it cover the right of a woman to decide whether to continue her pregnancy?
ROBERTS: Well, Senator, as I've explained, that is an area that's...
FEINSTEIN: Yes, apt to come before you and -- right. That message was well-conveyed.
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