A federal judge suggests that the Constitution could support a right to abortion via the 13th amendment.
This Bill Clinton appointee is asking lawyers, in a case against anti-abortion activists, to address whether the Dobbs ruling rejects a Constutional right to abortion completely or whether it is confined to the 14th amendment.
Here’s more via Politico:
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., suggested Monday that there may be a constitutional right to abortion baked into the 13th Amendment — an area she said went unexplored by the Supreme Court in its momentous decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade.
In a pending criminal case against several anti-abortion activists, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution that might apply.
“[I]t is entirely possible that the Court might have held in Dobbs that some other provision of the Constitution provided a right to access reproductive services had that issue been raised,” the judge wrote. “However, it was not raised.”
Kollar-Kotelly noted that there is some legal scholarship suggesting that the 13th Amendment — which was ratified at the end of the Civil War and sought to ban slavery and “involuntary servitude” — provides just such a right. She is asking the parties in the criminal case, which involves charges of blocking access to abortion clinics, to present arguments by mid-March.
In particular, the judge is asking them to address ”whether the scope of Dobbs is in fact confined to the Fourteenth Amendment” and “whether, if so, any other provision of the Constitution could confer a right to abortion as an original matter … such that Dobbs may or may not be the final pronouncement on the issue, leaving an open question.”
Kollar-Kotelly’s request stems from a year-old case against 10 defendants, who are charged with conspiring to block access to a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.
One of those defendants, Lauren Handy, contended that the conspiracy charge is no longer legitimate because the Dobbs decision took Congress out of the business of making laws related to abortion access.
“There is no longer a federal constitutional interest to protect, and Congress lacks jurisdiction,” Handy’s attorneys wrote. “The Dobbs court did not indicate that there is no longer a constitutional right to abortion; the court has made clear there never was.”
Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, indicated that she viewed this position as overly broad. Dobbs, she noted, confined its analysis to the 14th Amendment alone, although she conceded it contains sweeping statements that could lead one to conclude the justices were convinced nothing in the Constitution protects abortion rights.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion,” Justice Samuel Alito declared in the Dobbs majority opinion, which was endorsed by four other justices.
However, Kollar-Kotelly said that statement may merely be a “heuristic” and the legal effect of the Supreme Court ruling may be narrower.
The statement by Alito is absolutely clear when he writes “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” in the Dobbs ruling. It is not heuristic in any way shape or form. It is absolute and for Kollar-Kotelly to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.
Kollar-Kotelly is an activist judge who is trying to create a right to abortion where one does not exist. Just read the 13th amendment for yourself and see if you can find this so-called ‘right’ that she suggests may exist there:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
This says NOTHING about abortion in any way. It was written to abolish slavery in this country and has nothing to do with supporting unborn baby-murder.
If Kollar-Kotelly attempts to make abortion legal with some kind of ruling based on the 13th amendment, I feel sure the Supreme Court will quickly block it because it would be absolutely nonsense.