--- title: Abortion Decision and the Right to Privacy for Men description: The U.S. has a long history of protecting the privacy of men. The Dobbs decision on abortion shows a clear contrast in how it has regarded the private interests of women. canonical: https://time.com/6196495/privacy-rights-abortion-men-women/ author: Amy Gajda article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-07-16T11:00:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:06:06.186Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Founders Were Interested in the Right to Privacy—for Men og:description: The U.S. has a long history of protecting the privacy of men. The Dobbs decision on abortion shows a clear contrast in how it has regarded the private interests of women. og:url: https://time.com/6196495/privacy-rights-abortion-men-women/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9d4966f913b271db/698a339a09208f1e9441955a/men-privacy-history-roe-wade.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2289 og:image:height: 1288 og:image:alt: men-privacy-history-roe-wade og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Founders Were Interested in the Right to Privacy—for Men twitter:description: The U.S. has a long history of protecting the privacy of men. The Dobbs decision on abortion shows a clear contrast in how it has regarded the private interests of women. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9d4966f913b271db/698a339a09208f1e9441955a/men-privacy-history-roe-wade.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Founding Fathers Were Very Interested in the Right to Privacy—for Men > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=b1235a8f-a681-469e-9252-32e572677960&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: A History of How Abortion is Shown in Film and Television [Watch (HLS stream): A History of How Abortion is Shown in Film and Television](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Ca77dTts.m3u8) (8:41)  _Published 2022-07-05. TIME explores abortion and how it's covered across media; from films that tell cautionary tales and depict the procedure as life-upending to more compassionate pieces that portray the varied experiences of women._ by [Amy Gajda](https://time.com/author/amy-gajda/) ## Amy Gajda Jul 16, 2022 11:00 AM UTC  Khosrow Rajab Kordi—EyeEm/Getty Images by [Amy Gajda](https://time.com/author/amy-gajda/) ## Amy Gajda Jul 16, 2022 11:00 AM UTC Back in 1789, John Adams and others forming the new United States recognized a head-scratching potential issue with the yet-to-be-ratified First Amendment and other state constitutional provisions like it: If language promised broad press and speech freedoms, what did that mean for publishers who might reveal “instances of male conduct”? What if a newspaper dared to share those embarrassing and reputation-shredding times when politicians acted in randy and immoral ways? William Cushing, a man who’d soon become one of the very first Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, suggested [in a letter to Adams](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-19-02-0272#ADMS-06-19-02-0272-fn-0001-ptr) that it might well be the _man_ who was protected under the law, not the publisher of such information. “My question is this,” Cushing wrote, referring to language championing the importance of the freedom of the press. “Whether it is consistent with this article, to deem & adjudge any publications of the press, punishable as libels, that may arraign the conduct of persons in office, charging them with instances of male conduct repugnant to the duty of their offices & to the public good & Safety;—_when_ such charges are supportable by the truth of fact?” “Doubtless,” he wrote, the liberty of the press “may & ought to be restrainable” in certain cases. **Read More:** [_The Devastating Implications of Overturning Roe Will Go Far Beyond Abortion Patients_](https://time.com/6190782/roe-overturned-pregnancy-complications-miscarriage/) Adams agreed. “You may easily conceive a Case, when a Scandalous Truth may be told of a Man, without any honest motive, and merely from malice,” [he replied to Cushing](https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-19-02-0280). “\[I\]n Such a Case, Morality and religion would forbid a Man from doing Mischief merely from Malevolence, and I thought that Law would give damages.” Revealing instances of male conduct in print or otherwise without “Some just Cause for publishing” would, he suggested, be punishable despite whatever freedom of the press might be guaranteed. The two men didn’t use the word privacy and they didn’t say specifically that the sexual privacy interests of men should generally trump other constitutional interests, but that was precisely the uptake of their back-and-forth. Such interests were of course worthy of protection even in a country built on speech and press freedoms. Nearly 250 years later, that’s newly relevant. Because in [overturning _Roe v. Wade_](https://time.com/6189476/abortion-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade/) and rejecting constitutional protection for a woman’s right to choose abortion, the Supreme Court has now made clear that the historical attitudes of the men who framed and ratified the Constitution long ago will control the extent of privacy rights today. To quote the majority opinion in _Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization_, the only sorts of privacy interests that can qualify as fundamental rights under the Constitution are those found in the text of the Constitution or [“deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392%5F6j37.pdf) **Read More:** [_I’m a Doctor Who Cares for Newborns. I’m Nervous After the End of_ Roe](https://time.com/6194718/newborn-care-after-roe-essay/) Since privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, abortion’s claim to protection then hinged on history. The Court chided its predecessors in _Roe_ for finding fundamental constitutional protection for abortion based on a contemporary recognition of the profound personal stake of women in decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy through childbirth. Making such judgments about the extraordinary interests of women smacked too much of extra-judicial policymaking, the Court scolded. Only the validation of history could legitimate the enforcement of a non-textual constitutional right like the right of privacy. And history—evidenced by the views of the framers and the laws of their day—did not look favorably on women’s right to make their own decisions about a pregnancy. “\[A\]n unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law,” the majority wrote. All that was why women lost what the courts had recognized for a half century as their right to privacy in the abortion choice. But that other sort of privacy—the one discussed reverentially at the dawn of the nation by Adams and Cushing, the one that seemingly protected _men_ at the start—was not lost in _Dobbs_. There, the majority noted that “the right to shield information from disclosure” was a “very different” sort of privacy, not implicated in the Court’s rollback of constitutional autonomy rights. **Read More:** [_Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers Are Collecting Troves of Data That Could Be Weaponized Against Women_](https://time.com/6189528/anti-abortion-pregnancy-centers-collect-data-investigation/) The prioritization of the former goes well beyond any discussion between the founders. Consider that in the early 1800s, one court protected a man’s love letter. “How many serious things, proper to be communicated in the privacy of one’s correspondence, are unfit for the public eye,” that judge asked rhetorically. In 1845, the Supreme Court suggested that to say that “a man” had “the itch” (which is what they called sexually transmitted infections back then), even if true, was a legal wrong because it was scandalous and men deserved better: “If we look to the position of men in common life, we see the law drawing providently around them every security for their safety and their peace,” the Court wrote. A famous law review article titled “The Right to Privacy” was published in part to protect Grover Cleveland’s privacy interests in his dalliances and to keep journalists away. And on and on. It’s no wonder that the Restatement of Torts, a highly influential legal treatise of sorts still in use today, summed up the law this way in 1977: privacy interests protect a number of things, including [“most details of a _man’s_ life in his home, and some of _his_ past history that _he_ would rather forget.” ](https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/D2%2055797-5-II%20Unpublished%20Opinion.pdf)The italics are mine, but the choice of language is not. In short, the solicitude of the framers and our “deeply rooted” legal traditions for the privacy interests of men stands in notable contrast with the glaring absence of solicitude for the privacy interests of women in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in _Dobbs_. **Read More:** [_Without_ ](https://time.com/6192697/roe-v-wade-maternal-mortality/)[Roe v. Wade](https://time.com/6192697/roe-v-wade-maternal-mortality/)[_, U.S. Maternal Mortality Rates May Get Even Worse_](https://time.com/6192697/roe-v-wade-maternal-mortality/) This is what the dissent in _Dobbs_ pointed out, that those in charge of such things in the early days and even more recently gave little attention to _women’s_ privacy interests in sexuality and pregnancy and such because they were in fact all men. It was men who wrote the Constitution and the laws and the court opinions and even mainly, in 1977, the Restatement. Ultimately, then, the contrast between the keen sensitivity that long-ago generations of male framers showed for male privacy interests and what the _Dobbs_ majority found to be their ready tolerance of government interference with the private choices of women underscores the peril of looking to past generations—especially past generations of men alone—in defining the scope of constitutional rights for all today. ## Transcript Hey, I'm just a big show generations of filmmakers have to pick that the issue of abortion from stories about a legal procedures to perfectly legal and uneventful abortions and even the abortion pill. So following the Supreme Court decision to strike down row. How will a new reality in America begin to make its way onto screens pressure. Goes? Abortion in Phil is not new. Perhaps the earliest example, is the 1916 movie, where are my children in this film? Based on the trial of Planned Parenthood? Founder Margaret Sanger a lawyer Prosecuting, an illegal provider, finds out that his own wife has had multiple abortions, which is rendered her infertile the movie simultaneously. Argues a racist and eugenic point that birth control is important for someone. But that wealthy women who choose abortion or selfish early films, often told cautionary tales depicting. The procedure is traumatic and life up ending, but over the years storylines and movies have begun to evolve to become more compassionate and certainly more accurately display, the varied experiences of women and the realities of abortion. Let me local, okay. My experience with abortions on film is like in European films that scarred me for life, you know, just, you know, like the the did truly the backroom abortion scene work together on the film. Saint Francis, the movie follows a nanny and juxtaposes her taking care of a child during the day while just making the decision to terminate her own pregnancy. A lot of what I had an abortion when I was in my early thirties and all of the TV and install might seem that had to picked it up, orschlens made it seem really scary. And when I went through the actual process I felt relieved. I found the process to be while complicated actually pretty simple. And so I really wanted to show, you know, quote-unquote normal abortion isn't surrounded by traumatic events and that doesn't involve a lot of hand-wringing and doubt and regret but a woman knowing immediately or person know immediately but it wasn't the right time. Today, I found some clothes with fresh blood on them and I just was second, try to hurt herself or her mind. no, I had an abortion, a couple of months ago and I've been bleeding off and on ever since then that's too much. I feel like in must he be in thong. We've seen the woman really spend a lot of time questioning her decision and I'm sure that happens to many women in real life, but it has been a pretty monolithic exploration of doubt in terms of abortion as so. I wanted to show the other version which is I'm pregnant. I'm not going to have this baby because I don't think that either the lack of doubt, the lack of regret. Shonda Rhimes has just been like a complete game-changer for how we portray abortion on network television. Start making decisions about and talking about why it was important to her to be abortion provider and actually the first and then the second show to actually show the full of working procedure on screen and had intentions of managed abortion and see her absolute commitment to this type of Storytelling has I think really open doors for a lot of other writers and content creators who want to include that on network TV. Should be here. I should not be here. Walk down the street in and open the door and Waltz right in and say hello. My name is Veronica, my boyfriend is an asshole. Here's my $500. Elf, I already been on that journey of trying to normalize my own abortion and then this this book came to me and it felt like a perfect way to take the next step and really get to share my perspective, my heart, Rachel Lee Goldberg is the director of unpregnant her film details. The Adventures of a 17 year, old pregnant teen and ex-best friend as they travel from Missouri to New Mexico, to get an abortion idea of of this, not having to be a sad thing and it can just be something with the Central and something that happens is, is really, is, is important, is a perspective, it's real, it's a comedy, but the comedy in the, in the film largely comes from making fun of the journey. And that's, you know, that's how I feel very confident in saying that it's bullshit that these people have to travel this far, to get a procedure. A medical procedure unpregnant was made in 2020, but following the Supreme Court's decision in 2020 to abortions in Missouri are now permitted. Alien cases of medical emergency, there are no exceptions for rape or incest under the law. Abortion is still legal in New Mexico, which is readying to become a destination for women. Seeking care depictions of a board come a long way since the infancy of Hollywood and the institution of the Hays code in 1930, the Hays code was the system of self-censorship for filmed, requiring movies to be wholesome and more. If the character had an abortion in the movie, The Hays code required that they'd meet an unhappy ending, usually characters died, or abandon or ultimately chose not to have an abortion. The Hays code officially ended in 1968. Paving the way for more diverse coverage of abortion. Dirty Dancing continues to be one of my favorite abortion stories, that that is an American film. I just love it because I love it. That the whole plot of the movie is only propelled by tiniest friends, desire to help her, some help support her get an abortion, right? To help pay for the abortion. Help. Cover her day off of work and to help her see that abortion turns out to be dangerous and ends really support or network is really the driving force for the whole film. Is the battle to secure Reproductive Rights ramps up, and individual states. The role that films and TV can play in the battle for public opinion, may be more essential than ever to what comes next. I think, demystifying the process. I didn't know before I went and got a medication abortion, that that was even possible. I assumed it was going to be Surgical and so I think they're probably still a lot of people out there who don't know exactly what an abortion might entail for them. And we wanted to show the process of putting the pills in your cheek and let him know to dissolve and then you might get sick and and the recovery process so that people can feel seen before and the people who might want to see the horses in the future, don't feel scared of speaking for myself. I'm already on to my next for some project deep deep in abortion project number to right now. So you know I'm hoping that other people will be compelled to do the same you know, as as artists and filmmakers are people in Media. More and more specific stories, which I think is the trend that were seeing already. But I hope this lights of fire and, you know, maybe those storytellers who have stories to tell their sugar burning inside. You're compelled to tell them now, we're already seeing it, but I'm I'm, I'm excited for that next stage of of stories to be told. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6196495/privacy-rights-abortion-men-women/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6196495/privacy-rights-abortion-men-women/"},"headline":"The Founding Fathers Were Very Interested in the Right to Privacy—for Men","datePublished":"2022-07-16T11:00:01.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:06:06.186Z","description":"The U.S. has a long history of protecting the privacy of men. 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