A recent court opinion dives headfirst into a decades-long debate: Is the 14th Amendment the only source of a federal right to abortion? (via MaddowBlog)
.” Therefore, since Dobbs overturned Roe, the conventional wisdom has been there is no federal constitutional guarantee to abortion.threw legal observers for a loop this week. Kollar-Kotelly, a federal trial court judge since 1997, is handling aand filed last March.
One of those defendants then moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that because Dobbs states the Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion,” she could not have violated the statutes at issue.
By floating the Thirteenth Amendment — which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a convicted criminal — as a constitutional justification for abortion rights, Kollar-Kotelly might be engaged in high-minded, liberal trolling, asobserved this week.
On the other hand, she isn’t just expressing an opinion; she is calling for further briefing from the Justice Department and criminal defendants, a demand a judge of nearly three decades likely does not make lightly. Could this then be the opening salvo in a new debate about the breadth of Dobbs — and the revival of a federal constitutional avenue to abortion? The briefs will be in by mid-March. As we say here in the Maddowverse, watch this space.
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