For those who think abortion is wrong, where do they draw the line?

[CrispyQ]

37. Forced Labor, Revisited: The 13th Amendment and Abortion

Forced Labor, Revisited: The 13th Amendment and Abortion

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=facultyworkingpapers

2010
Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion
Andrew Koppelman
Northwestern University School of Law,
[e-mail]

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.

I don't know why the pro-choice movement doesn't use this argument.

Another thing, if the state can keep a woman from having an abortion, at what point do they determine that they can force some women to have abortions? People say that won't happen, but we never thought Donald Trump would be president, either. Anything can happen. It has never been about the sanctity of life, but about controlling the woman.