In some parts of China, local officials keep track of women’s menstrual periods. We haven’t come to that, but anyone who thinks women’s reproductive and sexual privacy is secure in America wasn’t following the news this summer. In August, John Stachokus obtained a temporary injunction from Judge Thomas Burke Jr. in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, barring his former girlfriend Tanya Meyers from having an abortion. Stachokus claimed that Meyers, who is 22, was being "pressured" by her mother; his lawyer further claimed that she had not given "informed consent" for the abortion. Fathers’ rights advocates lionized Stachokus while Meyers, who said Stachokus harassed her and threatened her with physical harm after she broke up with him, was pilloried on local talk-radio for days. Hours after the injunction was overturned by an exasperated Judge Michael Conahan, she miscarried.

What’s astonishing about the case is that it got as far as it did: Besides a string of rulings against boyfriends, including a previous one in Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 and in 1992 that the man’s interest in the fetus could never outweigh the woman’s right to decide what happens in her own body. Spousal notification was the only proposed restriction on abortion the Court rejected as over the line in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which originated in Pennsylvania–and you’d think would have caught Judge Burke’s notice.

Florida has come up with a more innovative way of humiliating pregnant women. Last year the state legislature voted 134 to 16 to require women who wish to place their babies for adoption and do not know the identity of the father to take out newspaper ads, at their own expense, in every locality in which they had sex within the relevant time frame: They have to publish their names and physical descriptions and those of every possible candidate for paternity. The ostensible purpose is to protect adoptions from fathers informed too late–a rare but always newsworthy event–but the law is obviously punitive as well. After all, if surprise dads are a serious problem in Florida, why did the legislature exempt adoptions done through state agencies? (Answer: The state didn’t want to pay for the ads, which can run to thousands of dollars.) There is no exemption for rape or incest victims, battered women, the mentally ill, the underage who "consent" to sex–so much for statutory rape. (A judge has exempted rape victims, while upholding the rest of the law, but the ruling applies only to Palm Beach County.) Defenders of the law hold up the specter of women who conceal their pregnancies from men eager to take on parental duties, if only they knew they had some. But adoption lawyers already search for biological fathers, and for men who wish to parent the product of a casual encounter a remedy already exists: In thirty states there are paternity registries, in which men can ask to be notified of adoption proceedings. Such a registry was rejected out of hand by Florida legislators–how could men be expected to sign on after every fleeting sex act? Keeping track of sperm is a woman’s job. Besides, the registry would violate men’s privacy–think of the risk for married men. Of course, the ads invade men’s privacy too–the legislators forgot about the part where the married man too cautious for the registry finds his extracurricular activities splattered all over the local pennysaver. Perhaps that’s one reason the law may be revised. Another is that adoptions have gone down in Florida since the law went into effect. Faced with the requirement that they parade in public wearing the scarlet letter, girls and women are having abortions instead.

They might want to consider donning a burqa for the walk to the clinic, though. Not content with circulating photos of clinic personnel, antichoice extremists around the country are now turning the camera on patients. Photos of women on their way in to clinics can now be found on the web. In Iowa, Dave Leach, a Republican candidate for the Iowa Statehouse who has ties to antiabortion terrorist Clayton Waagner and other scary types, has been filming "abortion customers," a practice for which he offers this ingenious rationale: "Abortionists admit a primary reason many mothers kill (6th commandment) is so their friends, family and loved ones won’t know they were promiscuous (7th commandment). So when our cameras threaten to expose both sins, they take away that reason to kill. Without that way to conceal their shame, some will be discouraged from either sin." (As for women who visit the clinic for other reasons–they shouldn’t.) Fortunately, Mediacom, the company that hosts his cable program, The Uncle Ed. Show, has refused to let him show the women’s faces on television.

Leach isn’t the only Iowan on slut patrol. Stymied in the case of a newborn found dismembered at a recycling plant, authorities in the town of Storm Lake are demanding that the local Planned Parenthood clinic turn over the records of all its pregnancy tests between August 15, 2001, and May 30, 2002. Potentially hundreds of women will find themselves under suspicion for infanticide if they can’t produce a baby to match their positive test, their privacy in shreds ("Come in, Officer. Um, what pregnancy test was that, darling?"). Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa is refusing to turn over the names, but a judge has upheld the subpoena on the grounds that pregnancy tests are not covered by doctor-patient confidentiality since nonmedical personnel can perform them. You might as well say that since you can talk about your problems with a friend, your therapist can be forced to reveal your secrets because some patient somewhere has committed a crime.

Keep in mind that in all these cases, the women who are seeing details of their intimate lives displayed against their will with possibly devastating effects have not been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. Pregnancy tests are a gynecological staple, having an abortion is legal and giving up a baby for adoption is widely regarded as a noble and altruistic act.

As the artist Barbara Kruger put it in a poster, "Your body is a battleground."