The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 12, states:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Most countries have laws protecting privacy. In some countries this is part of their constitution, such as France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. If the privacy of an individual is breached, the individual may bring a lawsuit asking for monetary damages. However, in the United Kingdom, recent cases involving celebrities such as David Beckham, however, have resulted in defeat as the information has been determined in the courts to be in the public interest<2>.
In various civil cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has found that the Constitution contains "penumbras" that implicitly grant a right to privacy against government intrusion; such cases include Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) (which allowed parents/guardians to educate their children), Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) (which explicitly recognised the right to privacy), Roe v. Wade (1973) (which prevented states from legislating against abortion), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (which prevented states from legislating against sodomy). On the other hand, the Supreme Court, in California v. Greenwood (1988), decided that trash does not carry a privacy expectation. The
penumbral privacy right has also not been found to apply to government intrusion into individuals' financial data as it applies to the income tax, their residency data as it applies to the Census, or age data as once applied to conscription and now applies to registration for the non-existent draft.
As the
U.S. constitution does not explicitly grant a right to privacy, its application by the Court to privacy cases seems quite arbitrary and the right to privacy is a hotly debated issue — strict constructionists argue that there is no such right and civil libertarians argue that the right invalidates many types of surveillance, such as CCTV cameras and wiretaps.
Most states in the U.S. grant a right to privacy and recognise four torts:
Intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairs;
Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts;
Publicity which places a person in a false light in the public eye; and
Appropriation of name or likeness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#Privacy_lawsPENUMBRAL :
The origins of our modern "Right to Privacy" are found in what are known as penumbras of constitutional rights or penumbral rights. A penumbra is a partial shadow between regions of complete darkness and complete illumination, as in an eclipse. In law, penumbra refers to an area in which something exists in a lesser or uncertain degree. Penumbral rights are rights that the Constitution does not specifically mention, but may be implied by the rights that are enumerated
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which means that though the right to privacy is in general MUCH STRONGER IN EUROPE it has
never been used as a MAJOR argument to justify the right to abortion.The motivations in Europe are that abortion is a social and medical right, because it improves women's well being. Besides women have a right to dispose of their bodies
WHICH IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT.
FOr me the "privacy" argument is only a smokescreen to avoid to discuss the real HUMAN AND SOCIAL ISSUES.