Motherhood isn’t slavery. This ought to be obvious, but after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the left has pushed a variety of bizarre legal theories as they scramble to ensure that elective abortions continue unabated across the country. They just got a federal judge to consider one of the looniest legal theories — the sort of theory that shouldn’t be heard outside of a mediocre law professor’s late-night conversations with her cats after hitting the wine box a bit too hard — which is that pregnancy is slavery, and therefore the 13th Amendment confers a right to abortion.
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a district court judge appointed by Bill Clinton, has ordered briefing on the question of whether, despite the Dobbs decision, there might be a constitutional right to abortion, perhaps conferred by the 13th Amendment. This inquiry is unnecessary to resolve the immediate questions in the case, which is about an alleged conspiracy to block access to an abortion facility. It also ignores the plain text of Dobbs, which states that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.” As my colleague Ed Whelan put it, “This silly order by Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a frolic and detour.”
Lawyers recognize that, judicially, this is going nowhere. But as the legal counterpart to abortion supporters’ rhetoric about “forced birth,” this argument is illuminating. Its efforts to justify abortion reveal a bitter worldview that spitefully rebels against the nature of human existence itself.
The legal reasoning of this theory is that
