Adele M. Stan is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com. She is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

Once upon a time, the future composition of the Supreme Court was an issue in the presidential campaign because experts predict that the next president could appoint as many as three justices to the high court. But as the campaign has descended into the minutiae of prescription-drug benefits and who offers the better tax cut, the one issue that could affect regular Americans most deeply seems to have dropped off the radar screen.

So far in this campaign, when the issue of the high court has been raised, it always has been done solely in the context of what has become known as "a woman's right to choose." The appointment of a single new justice, we have been told, could result in the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme court decision that legalized abortion.

But the very underpinning of Roe is in the right to privacy argued on the right of a woman to make private decisions about her own reproductive health. And that is what the right is really after -- not just an end to abortion but the revocation of the whole of our right to privacy. Even if the two major contenders for the nation's highest office continue to ignore the composition of the Supreme Court as a monumental issue, voters do so at their own peril.

Righteous judges and 75 million voter guides

No one seemed to notice when, at a Christian Coalition rally held in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention, the Rev. Pat Robertson promised his followers that their votes for George W. Bush would ensure the appointment of "righteous judges" of the sort who would be inclined to overturn Roe. But Robertson did not stop there.

After most of the reporters had left the room, he launched into a tirade deriding the very right to privacy the court acknowledged to be part of the 14th Amendment when it overturned Connecticut's ban on the sale of contraceptives in 1954. He mocked attorney William O. Douglas' argument in defense of the "penumbra," or shadows of a privacy guarantee in the amendment, and expressed confidence that a new President Bush would appoint only "strict constructionists" to the high court, presumably those who would render the Constitution penumbra-free.

There may be no evidence that George W. Bush has made a deal with Robertson to appoint the sort of justices Robertson promised his followers. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Bush feels a debt of gratitude to the religious right for his primary wins in the South, which he paid by giving the movement's leaders a heavy hand in shaping the GOP platform.

The right's platform coups included a plank that calls for the elimination of funding for family planning programs that serve young people, and that would, if enacted, place a gag rule on school nurses inclined to educate sexually active kids on their contraceptive options. After Robertson distributes the 75 million "voter guides" he promises to shower upon churches the week before the election, what debt will he then be owed him should Bush win the White House?

Camelot meets Hollywood

Over the course of the presidential campaign, no elected official has bothered to address the full scope of the right's agenda for the court -- perhaps because they doubt the public's ability to understand it. In fact, to date the case has been made not by politicians or pundits but by two unlikely spokeswomen: Barbra Streisand and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

In the latter case, it was so brief, so fleeting, so polite, that it was easy to miss. In her speech before the Democratic National Convention, as the pundits and television viewers stood mesmerized by the memory of Camelot, Schlossberg raised the specter of a dark new frontier that could confront America if Bush were to win the presidency.

If we don't create a government that is "close to our heart's desire," she warned, "somebody else will. ... Let me tell you, that somebody else's government is not what we want."

It has taken Schlossberg, a woman who has never sought public attention but who cannot avoid it, to bring this point, however obliquely, to our attention: "If we want a Supreme Court that will protect the freedoms in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- including the right to privacy that will keep our personal financial and medical information from being up for grabs, and will guarantee our right to make our own reproductive decisions," she said, "then it is up to us."

In far more dramatic fashion, Streisand took on the issue in true diva style when she addressed the crowd that gathered in Los Angeles's Shrine Auditorium for a high-priced fundraiser after Vice President Al Gore made his acceptance speech to the convention. "There are three reasons to vote for Al Gore," Streisand told the packed house: "The Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court."

Then, as no other Democrat managed to do so effectively over the course of the convention, the singer ran down the list of all that lay at stake with the next round of Supreme Court appointments: "civil rights, women's rights, privacy rights and reproductive rights." Succinctly, but with timing and passion, she pleaded the case that not even the Democratic nominee managed to make. "Let's face it," she said with great gusto, "this is a war against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia!"

Lack of political will

Given a lack of will on the part of politicians and the media to address the full score of rights at risk in the upcoming election, I hope Schlossberg and Streisand will renew their crusades to educate the public on just what's "up for grabs." With her access to virtually all media with a snap of her well manicured fingers, Streisand can plead her case at will, even if she does it in a way that will no doubt irritate those who are not her fans.

Schlossberg has a unique opportunity to sell her complex argument to the American electorate. People will listen to her. Because of her unusual circumstances and the severe losses she has suffered as the sole survivor of her immediate family, she carries a moral authority that only the suffering are accorded in our culture.

Should she make herself willing to endure the camera's glare for the duration of this campaign, she could convince Americans to spare themselves the suffering they will no doubt experience should the "strict constructionists" promised by Bush and Robertson ever come to rule our nation's highest court.