"A married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman"
About this Quote
A judge choosing to say this out loud is the point. Wachtler’s line isn’t trying to sound poetic; it’s trying to sound inevitable. By framing bodily autonomy as a matter of “same right,” he yanks the debate out of moral theater and drops it into equal protection logic: marriage changes your tax filing status, not your sovereignty.
The specific intent is narrow and strategic. It targets a stubborn legal and cultural residue: the idea that marriage quietly transfers a woman’s decision-making power to the institution, the husband, or the state’s preferred story about “the family.” In one sentence, Wachtler treats that residue as an anachronism. “Married” and “unmarried” function like a stress test for the law. If the right exists at all, it can’t be conditional on whether you wear a ring.
The subtext is sharper than the syntax. He’s also rebuking a common political move: dressing up control as protection. When the state claims an interest in preserving marital harmony or traditional roles, the woman’s body becomes a bargaining chip in a social contract she never signed. Wachtler’s plain language refuses that trade.
Context matters because judges speak inside a system with a long memory of coverture and “marital privacy” arguments that often protected husbands more than wives. The line anticipates modern fights where “family values” rhetoric is used to carve out exceptions to autonomy. It works because it’s not aspirational; it’s a boundary marker, telling the law where it stops.
The specific intent is narrow and strategic. It targets a stubborn legal and cultural residue: the idea that marriage quietly transfers a woman’s decision-making power to the institution, the husband, or the state’s preferred story about “the family.” In one sentence, Wachtler treats that residue as an anachronism. “Married” and “unmarried” function like a stress test for the law. If the right exists at all, it can’t be conditional on whether you wear a ring.
The subtext is sharper than the syntax. He’s also rebuking a common political move: dressing up control as protection. When the state claims an interest in preserving marital harmony or traditional roles, the woman’s body becomes a bargaining chip in a social contract she never signed. Wachtler’s plain language refuses that trade.
Context matters because judges speak inside a system with a long memory of coverture and “marital privacy” arguments that often protected husbands more than wives. The line anticipates modern fights where “family values” rhetoric is used to carve out exceptions to autonomy. It works because it’s not aspirational; it’s a boundary marker, telling the law where it stops.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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