NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF PRIVACY 133

A EXT–PRIVACY LAW LINKS–PRIVACY LAW EMPIRICALLY HURTS WOMEN

PRIVACY LAW HAS BEEN A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD FOR WOMEN AND GAYS

Anita L. Allen, Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, "COERCING PRIVACY," William & Mary Law Review, March, 1999, 40 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 723, EE2001-hxm, P.

In the United States, women won the right to obtain legal contraception and abortion in the 1960s and 1970s under the banner of "the right to privacy." n98 Many feminists blame the emphasis on privacy in abortion law for the failure of legal efforts to secure government funding for poor women's abortions. n99 Perhaps it is no accident that equal protection, rather than privacy, is now apparently the more promising jurisprudential basis for advocating gay rights since the privacy debacle of Bowers v. Hardwick. n100