General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA woman's body autonomy as precedent
Any input on this argument from the excellent legal minds here on DU? Seems pretty good to me.
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Freddie
(9,232 posts)Should he argued using the 13th Amendment, the one about unlawful servitude.
CrispyQ
(36,231 posts)I wish the pro-choice groups would add The Thirteenth Amendment as an argument to their arsenal.
2010
Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion
Andrew Koppelman
Northwestern University School of Law, akoppelman@law.northwestern.edu
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=facultyworkingpapers
snip...
I. The basic argument The Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows:
1. 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.
2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
My claim is that the amendment is violated by laws that prohibit abortion. When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to "involuntary servitude" in violation of the amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the Amendment's guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, creates "that control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude."6
Such laws violate the amendment's guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, by virtue of a status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves.
~more at link
Parents can't be compelled to donate their organs to their child, even to save the child's life. Why does a fetus have more claim on a woman's body than her child who has been born?
THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION A WOMAN CAN MAKE ISN'T YOURS.
intheflow
(28,407 posts)Which of course completely dismisses the physical-emotional toil pregnancy brings even when a child is joyfully anticipated, and more-so when a child is not. Add on layers of societal expectations and judgments, maybe even death threats, crippling healthcare costs, and an already overflowing and exceptionally dysfunctional foster care/adoption system -- men who make these laws have no fucking idea, and the women who go along with it are living in a state of denial which romanticizes that all children will be wanted and cared for if a woman carries a fetus to term.
iemanja
(53,003 posts)and legal theorists have been arguing against a right to privacy for decades, even since Griswold. It's why that question always comes up in SCOTUS confirmation hearings and why the RWers refuse to answer it.
I recall some point during the 2016 campaign in which Trump responded to a question about the right to privacy in a way that showed he had no clue about it's importance in the abortion debate.
myccrider
(484 posts)Ive been yelling this point for-effing-ever!
The way I frame the point is to ask if it would be ok for the (big, scary, evil ) government to mandate that all men had to donate blood, bone marrow, part of their liver or a kidney to whoever matched them genetically, in order to save a life. No choice.
Generally, this elicits :crickets:, occasionally someone gets an "Aha!" face.