No, Being A Mother To Your Unborn Baby Is Not The Same As Slavery

Motherhood isn’t slavery. This should be obvious but it is not. Dobbs Decision overturned Roe v. WadeAs they try to keep elective abortions in the United States unaffected, the left has advanced a number of bizarre legal theories. They have just appointed a federal judge. 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 judge in the district court, was appointed by Bill Clinton. ordered Briefing on the question: “Despite the…” Dobbs decision that the 13th Amendment might confer a constitutional right of abortion. This inquiry does not address the immediate question in the case. It concerns an alleged conspiracy to prevent access to abortion facilities. It ignores the plain text DobbsIt states that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.” Like my colleague Ed Whelan It is best to put it, “This silly order by Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a frolic and detour.” 

Lawyers are aware that this is going to be a judicial issue. There is nowhere. But as the legal counterpart to abortion supporters’ rhetoric about “forced birth,” This argument is quite revealing. Its attempts to justify abortion show a bitter worldview, which rebels against the very nature of human existence.

This theory is based on the legal principle that unintended pregnancy, according to the 13th Amendment, is a form or unintended pregnancy. “slavery or involuntary servitude” because in an unwanted pregnancy, a woman’s body is used by another (that is, the child developing inside her) without her consent. Consenting to sex, even though it’s a possible outcome, is not consenting for pregnancy. Women need to have the right to choose to end a unwanted pregnancy.

Like many crazy theories, this argument has an internal logic. No matter how much a woman may like them, pregnancy and childbirth can impose risks and burdens on women. Intentional ignorance to all things, other than this brief chain of reasoning, is what makes lunacy.

At the time of the 13th Amendment’s writing and ratification, no one thought that unwanted pregnancy was a form involuntary servitude. They were right. It is absurd to consider a developing woman in her womb an intrusive stranger without any claim upon her. It is insane to think that normal, natural human reproduction is the moral and legal equivalent to slavery. 

Because they are completely different, the burdens and dangers associated with pregnancy are not like slavery. However, the attempt to relate them is misleading insofar that it assumes a philosophy where people exist as isolated, atomized individuals without any moral claims on each other, except for what they have agreed to. This Liberal political theory To the absurd