In the debate over whether Roe v. Wade should be overruled, a major constitutional issue has been neglected.
Imagine a world in which women are forced to bear children. They do not control their reproductive powers. Their bodies are at the command of others. Their bodies are mere instruments. Their lives are seized and put to the service of purposes not their own.
This isn’t
dystopian fiction. That was the United
States before the Civil War, for enslaved people who were female. We adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to end
the institution of antebellum slavery – all of it. The amendment provides that “Neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States.” That has implications for abortion,
implications that I’ve been pressing for a long time.