If given the opportunity to plan a week of instruction for the History of Human Sexuality course, I would focus lecture on U.S. Supreme Court cases pertinent to shaping sexuality and gender, the policies on which they ruled, and the political and social climate that influenced the type of decisions given by the Justices. My assigned articles for week 16 entitled “US Society & Sexuality” would be and excerpt from the book Sexuality, Gender, & the Law and a recently published study entitled The Effects of Megan’s Law on Sex Offender Reintegration.
The former would be assigned in order to remind students of the mindset of US citizens during the early 20th century and reemphasizes the attempted medicalization of sexuality that we had discussed
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Wade. In this case, she filed a class action lawsuit arguing against the constitutionality of a Texas law that made it illegal to attempt or obtain an abortion except in cases where the pregnancy is determined to be fatal to the mother. The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the enforcement of a policy prohibiting women from having safe access to an abortion was unconstitutional. They found their grounding for this ruling in the fifth and fourteenth amendment that have to deal will due process, which they defined as being inclusive of a right to privacy. This was another step forward and away from the once prohibited actions made illegal by the Comstock act. Roth was in charge of operating a book business in New York and was accused and convicted of mailing obscene circulars that were supposedly in violation of the federally enforced obscenity statutes at the time. The Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 decision that obscenity was not constitutionality protected under the first amendment. They reasoned that the intention of the first amendment was not to defend and protect every form of expression especially those that do not carry with them any value of social
My Megan’s law in Tennessee is TCA code 40-39-217 (Community notification system). This statute is what legally allows the Tennessee bureau of investigation, a sheriff, or chief of police to notify the community when a sex offender is integrated into that particular jurisdiction. This is a state law that meets the political characteristics, as it’s a justifiable source of criminal law (Bohm & Haley, 2011). Specificity is present in the statute as it explains in great detail the requirements to implement the notifications of a sex offender (Bohm & Haley, 2011). For example, this law states very specifically that the legislative body of a county, municipality or metropolitan government can apply this notification system with a 2/3 vote.
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(1), 49-66. Levenson, J.S., D’Amora, D.A., & Hern, A.L. (2007). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'. Megan’s Law and its impact on community re-entry for sexual offenders. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 25(1), 587-602.
Stychin, Carl. "Promoting a Sexuality: Law and Lesbian and Gay Visual Culture in America." Law and the Senses. Ed. Lionel Bently and Leo Flynn. London: Pluto , 1996. 65-79.
...am Victorian society, sexual liberalism transformed the ways in which people arranged their private lives. Shifting from a Victorian environment of production, separate sexual spheres, and the relegation of any illicit extramarital sex to an underworld of vice, the modern era found itself in a new landscape of consumerism, modernism and inverted sexual stereotypes. Sexuality was now being discussed, systemized, controlled, and made an object of scientific study and popular discourse. Late nineteenth-century views on "natural" gender and sexuality, with their attendant stereotypes about proper gender roles and proper desires, lingered long into the twentieth century and continue, somewhat fitfully, to inform the world in which we live. It is against this cultural and political horizon that an understanding of sexuality in the modern era needs to be contextualized.
No other element of the Women’s Rights Movement has generated as much controversy as the debate over reproductive rights. As the movement gained momentum so did the demand for birth control, sex education, family planning and the repeal of all abortion laws. On January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision which declared abortion "fundamental right.” The ruling recognized the right of the individual “to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” (US Supreme Court, 1973) This federal-level ruling took effect, legalizing abortion for all women nationwide.
In July of 1994, a little girl named, Megan Kanka, was raped and strangled. They found her body near her home in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. The story of thing young girl has shocked the nation. The man responsible for this brutal act is named, Jesse Timmendequas. He had been convicted twice prior to this attack.
and Sexuality in US Prisons." Critical Survey 23, no. 3: 55-66. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. doi:10.3167/cs.2011.230305
On January 22, 1973 the court issued its opinion with a 7-2 majority voting to strike down the Texas law. State laws outlawing abortion were set aside by the court, permitting abortions during the first three months of pregnancy and setting standards for regulations after that time to safeguard the women's health. The Supreme Court declared all but the least restrictive state statues unconstitutional. Noting that early abortions had become safer than childbirth and reasoning that the word "person" in the constitution "does not include the unborn." The Court
In 1971, Norma McCorvey or Jane Roe, filled a case against the district attorney of Dallas County, Henry Wade, because he enforced a Texas law that prohibited abortion unless the abortion was needed medically, to save the mother’s life. Being a single, pregnant woman , Roe did not have the choice to have an abortion because the pregnancy was not endangering her life. Plus, Roe could not afford to travel to have the operation done safely. As a result, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, two lawyers that graduated from the University of Texas Law School, claimed a lawsuit against the abortion laws in Texas because they violated Roe’s constitutional rights. Besides Roe’s two laywers, Hallford, a licensed physician, and a childless married couple known as the Does supported Roe’s case. The lawsuit against Wade was filed in a Texas Federal Court. The Texas Federal Court heard the case on December 13th, 1971 and again, on October 11th, 1972. After the examination of Weddington and Coffee’s argument against Jay Floyd’s, the lawyer for Wade during the first argument, and Robert C. Flower’s, the lawyer for Texas in the second argument, the court ruled in Roe’s favor by claiming that the law did violate the Constitution. Consequently, Wade appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The right to privacy is nowhere listed in the Bill of Rights, however the First Congress that established the Constitution intended for the concept of right to privacy to be implemented or derived in some way. The Supreme Court decision made due to the case of Roe v. Wade has been called both radical and temperate (Edwards III, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 131). It was first argued in December 13, 1971 by a Texas woman named Norma McCorvey. “A three-judge District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies” (Thomas Reuters Business). The case was later appealed by Jane Roe and was sent to the Supreme Court to be tried again. She went by the pseudonym “Jane Roe” in order to keep herself confidential to the public. Jane Roe wanted to terminate her pregnancy by abortion but was prohibited by Texas state law stating that abortion was illegal unless it was required to say the woman’s life which wasn...
Wade was “the fetal right to life against a woman’s right to privacy,” and which right gets priority (“Roe v. Wade.” Roe v. Wade). An unmarried pregnant woman, Norma McCorvey, but known as Jane Roe, sought an abortion in the state of Texas where abortion, by law, was a criminal offense. Roe challenged the Texas statute arguing that it was unconstitutional (Landmark Supreme Court Cases 2). At the same time of Roe’s challenges, young lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, were seeking a plaintiff to challenge the Texas abortion laws. The trial did not end in time for Roe to get an abortion, but she kept fighting for future women in her same situation ("Roe vs Wade." TheFreeDictionary.com). Up against the District Attorney of Dallas, Texas, and Henry Wade, Jane Roe argued that the statutes regarding abortion were unconstitutionally vague and violated her first, fourth, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth amendment rights (Landmark Supreme Court Cases 4). Roe was “unable to have a ‘legal’ abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy” (Landmark Supreme Court Cases 2). Although other jurisdictions offered legal abortions, Roe argued that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction and that she had a right to have an abortion “performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions” (Landmark Supreme Court Cases 2). Texas refuted the use of the
Milstein, Susan A. Taking Sides Clashing Views in Human Sexuality. Ed. William J. Taverner and Ryan W. McKee. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
In the year March 1970, a woman dubbed Jane Roe took federal action against Texas abortion laws. These laws prevented Roe from terminating her pregnancy because abortions were only allowed in the scenario that the fetus was harming the life of the mother (Rosenbaum 63). Because Roe wasn’t in any way harmed by her pregnancy, she could not get an abortion. “Roe believed that TX statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments” (Rosenbaum 64). She wanted an abortion done professionally in a clean and safe environment (Rosenbaum 63). Women before the legalization of abortion would resort to unsafe methods to terminate their baby (Tribe 113).
In 1971 Linda Coffee and Sarah Wellington sued on Norma McCorvey behalf, arguing that the state of Texas abortion law was unconstitutional. Defending the state of Texas was Henry Wade, district attorney of Dallas. The state of Texas only allowed abortions in cases where the mother’s life was at risk or the women was sexually assaulted. After two years of hearing evidence, the US Supreme Court affirms legality, a women’s right to abort, and that a right to privacy being implied by the Ninth and Fourteenth amendments in a 7-2 decision in 1973. It had encompassed a woman’s decision whether or not to stop her pregnancy. No states could restrict abortion during first three months or trimester of a pregnancy.
The sexual revolution occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. It was caused by a variety of reasons such as the weakening of control of adolescent behavior, separation of sexuality from reproduction, and open appearance of different orientation. Furthermore, people ceased to perceive sex as something shameful and immoral. In this regard, there were many problems associated with the ignorance of the majority of people in matters of sexuality; consequently, government decided to impose a duty to explain to pupils basic reproductive processes and precautions on schools. Teaching a class of sex education would have sufficient benefits such as "lower teenage pregnancies, a decline in sexually transmitted diseases, more responsible thinking" (Blanton).