In 1973, the Court in the Roe v. Wade decision gave the individual the right to destroy the unborn through abortion, and three years later in Planned… - Bob McDonnell

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In 1973, the Court in the Roe v. Wade decision gave the individual the right to destroy the unborn through abortion, and three years later in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth it extended the supremacy of individual privacy over parental authority in the child's abortion decision. In his seminal article on the Court's role in shaping a national family policy, scholar Peter J. Riga suggests that in Danforth, "marriage is seen as a tenuous union formed by the consensual agreement of the two individuals who remain autonomous and independent throughout the relationship." He further asserts that by the end of the 1970s, the Court had, for all practical purposes, obliterated the difference between marriage and non-marriage, replacing the sacred covental view of marriage with the "positivistic view that a marriage is but an act of the state, which powers the state may delegate in appropriate cricumstances." In other cases, the abuses of the judicial doctrines of "in loco parentis" and "parens patriae," particularly in such areas as education, discipline of children, and child custody, have fostered subversion of the role of the parent in favor of ultimate decisions on family and children matters by the state and federal governments.