Judge Says Federal Right to Abortion May Still Exist

“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,” Politico reports.

Judge Colleen 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.”