Reva Siegel Summary

broad concept and does not have a clear-cut definition. Even though the government should interfere as little as possible in people’s private lives, a right as controversial as a woman’s choice to have abortion requires a sturdy, precisely defined constitutional basis that is capable of providing protection for such an important women’s right.

B. Reva Siegel’s Contribution to the Equality Approach Another scholar who is in favor of the equality approach and who reinforces MacKinnon’s argument is Reva Siegel. She has written a historical piece that is extremely important to understand both the women’s movement and the process of constitutional change through cases like Roe v. Wade. Her main historical argument is that the understanding of

For instance, there have been many people who argue that women need to be protected from abortion. I think what she is trying to highlight here is that these arguments are based on old, backwards, paternalistic ideas that women should be protected from bad decisions, or from coercion, by taking away their decisions instead of empowering them to make the choice themselves. This paternalistic way of thinking is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. MacKinnon said that “the point is to apply existing law to women as if women were citizens—as if the doctrine was not gendered to women’s disadvantage, as if the legal system had no sex, as if women were gender neutral persons temporality trapped by law in female bodies.” Siegel agrees and says that abortion bans are subordinating and based on archaic

First, the equality argument in this context should be looked at as a way of showing how the legal system leaves out women’s rights and concerns when defining reproductive rights. Second, the right to abortion is all-inclusive and is not based on two different liberties, but on the fact that they are connected. I think any analysis should include both the aspect of the physical as well as that of the social. If it does focus on one or the other, it should acknowledge that the approach is