The Ruling in Dobbs and the 13th Amendment
The Constitution of the United States of America
AMENDMENT XIII
Section 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.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
An astute constitutional originalist or textualist might easily conclude that ‘forced pregnancy’, such as that which African slave girls and women were routinely subjected to, may be subsumed into the phrase; “involuntary servitude”.
This would make the ruling in the Dobbs case, which forces women into giving birth regardless of the circumstances resulting in pregnancy, unconstitutional on its face as violative of the 13th Amendment.
The current Democratic Congress needs to do away with the filibuster and codify Roe before it’s too late…
We simply cannot afford to wait fifty years for the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson to be overturned as it is most likely to be found, over time, to be “egregiously wrong”.
07/01/2022 @ 9:38 am
I really like this interpretation. It’s very sharp.
My next concern is states trying to control what their residents do out of state. I’m afraid of a Fugitive Slave Bill.
There’s also another issue in danger of showing up. You remember the concern with President Kennedy’s Catholicism as influencing policy, the “Vatican gunboats on the Potomac” worry. Thanks to the Supreme Court, they’re finally here. This is not a national issue we need. Democratic Catholics are careful about this but Republican Catholics are way less so. This is the equivalent of the mythical Sharia threat except not mythical, and the American branch of the Church is being blatantly triumphalist about it. This is really dangerous in two directions at once. As a Jew the last thing I want to see is religious loyalty questions but I think we’re about to see them raised. This looks too political as opposed to judicial.
07/01/2022 @ 11:15 pm
I’m waiting for the talking heads to pick up on this line of reasoning.
Remember that you heard it here first…
07/01/2022 @ 11:43 pm
I’m very aware of that. It’s an Impressive interpretation.
07/02/2022 @ 4:56 am
Kosh,
Feel free to share it wherever you post or engage in exchanges on these matters….