ABSTRACT
Given that public temper, one could expect to report confidently that the outlook was good for increasing respect for individual liberty in the United States. Making that assessment requires, however, an impossible definition of the philosophic principle of liberty marking the appropriate areas of individual autonomy and legitimate government concern. The right of privacy has created a sphere of individual autonomy, but that sphere is not concentric with that which would exist if the Mill hypothesis were the rule of decision. Beyond the right of privacy, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment may immunize some aspects of individual choice from state control. Having rejected the argument that a woman's choice of abortion was absolute, the Court was forced to cope with the question whether protection of the fetus was a sufficient basis for a broad ban on abortion. For some, the privacy interests that the Court has recognized cannot be reconciled with autonomy claims that have been denied.
