A Columbia University law professor sought to answer how privacy and secrecy play a role in abortions while addressing students and community members at the UF Levin College of Law.
Carol Sanger, the Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, spoke Wednesday about the differences between abortion privacy and abortion secrecy and how they both affect women.
Sanger brought up the U.S. Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade and said abortion is still an unsettled legal issue.
“One would think that 40 years might have settled things, and it hasn’t,” she said.
The name “Jane Roe” was used as a pseudonym in the court case because it dealt with abortion. Sanger said there are three other instances where one can remain anonymous in court: age, homosexuality and child abandonment.
But abortion is rarely a complete secret, Sanger said.
She described privacy as a woman’s choice to talk or stay silent for reasons other than a well-founded fear of harm.
Secrecy suggests it’s better to keep something to oneself because if a woman doesn’t, harm will follow.
“Without privacy, one’s choice is effectively made by others,” she said.
An abortion can follow a woman and is often used against her credibility, Sanger said.
“It is no good for women to feel empowered by exercising their privacy rights when it’s secrecy masquerading as privacy,” she said.
Kimi Swartz, a 25-year-old UF student pursuing a joint degree in law and medicine, said the lecture raised important concerns about how abortions are seen in society.
The topic was relevant to Swartz’s career aspirations.
“I came because I’m interested in providing abortions one day,” Swartz said.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 3/19/2015 under the headline “Columbia Law professor speaks on legal issues of abortion”]
