A Democrat judge in Washington, DC believes she’s found a way to reinstate a constitutional “right” to abortion that never actually existed.
According to Politico, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who you’ll be shocked to learn looks like the ultimate Karen, is hoping to rule on the idea that the 13th Amendment enshrines abortion under the guise of “involuntary servitude.”
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.
Right from the start, the judge’s actions seem highly inappropriate. She’s dealing with a criminal case and is trying to hijack it in order to push a broader political goal. That the case involves so-called “anti-abortion activists” only makes things worse.
Imagine how their defense teams feel seeing an extremely biased, pro-abortion judge telling the prosecution what argument she wants them to make so she can then rule on it. And would anyone like to guess how she’ll rule given it was her suggestion? I’m not going to say the judge’s behavior is unprecedented because I honestly don’t know, but I do know it’s an insane abuse of the legal process.
On the merits, the idea that the 13th Amendment somehow protects a “right” to abortion is farcical. It is not “indentured servitude” to have a baby, and it’s an insult to generations of slaves and indentured servants who actually suffered under an unjust system to even suggest that. By Kollar-Kotelly’s rationale, a mother should be able to murder a three-year-old. After all, a parent must serve their children (especially at younger ages).
Motherhood, before or after birth, is not slavery, and the 13th Amendment was clearly not written to protect abortion. There’s activism from the bench, and then there’s whatever the heck this judge is trying to do. Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn that Kollar-Kotelly also handles a lot of January 6th cases and has been rubber-stamping government prosecutions in the process.
But honestly, I say let her and her Democrat allies try this latest gambit, if for nothing else than the sheer entertainment value of seeing the US Supreme Court slap them down. The reason Roe v. Wade was even overturned is that the left flew too close to the sun. Had they not fought abortion laws in conservative states, the Supreme Court never would have had the vehicle to make the Dobbs decision. If they once again overplay their hand with this ridiculous 13th Amendment idea, it will only lead to more sweeping rulings against them.
