Slavery and Abortion?

On Tuesday, July 12, 2022, Northwestern University hosted a webinar entitled, Implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision. Six faculty members of Northwestern participated in the webinar: Dr. Cassing Hammond (abortion practitioner), Professor Paul Gowder, Professor Heidi Kitrosser, Professor Andrew M. Koppelman, Professor Doreen Weisenhaus, and Dean Hari Osofsky (she/her).

The lament from these six esteemed members of the once Christian Northwestern University is to be expected. I want to call attention specifically to Prof. Andrew Koppelman who claimed that the right to abortion should be protected by the 13th amendment.

Ed Whelan in a recent tweet noted that by his count the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments have all been cited in support the non-existent constitutional right to abortion.[1] Like the astronomer, Percival Lowell who spent 15 years studying canals on Mars, these progressive experts think they find abortion everywhere they look in the US Constitution.[2]

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and proclaimed in the final days of 1865. The text of this amendment has two sections.

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.

It is interesting to recognize in these debates that those who advocate for killing unborn children proclaim themselves to be the compassionate abolitionists. Those who want to save children from being dismembered and vacuumed out of their mother’s wombs are the equivalent of the evil slave owners.

According to the perverse logical of these supposed abolitionists, pregnancy is slavery. If you “force” someone to carry a child to term, that would go against the Thirteenth Amendment. Really?

Now I should point out that Prof. Koppelman did not develop his argument in this webinar. He has written a thirty-page paper on the subject. His abstract states, “The Thirteenth Amendment's purpose is to end the specific institution of antebellum slavery. A ban on abortion would do to women what slavery did to the women who were enslaved: compel them to bear children against their will.”[3]

Let’s accept this argument for just a moment. Where does it end? What about a distressed mother who has to provide care for her ornery two-year old who whines, demands, runs away, and never sleeps when the mother desires. Forcing a mother to care for this child sounds a lot like slavery to me. Or what about a son or daughter who provides care for an aging relative who suffers from dementia or Alzheimer’s. Without any thanks, care must be provided around the clock for someone who often has no resources to compensate for the care given. That sounds a lot like slavery to me, well at least according to this perverse logic.

Stick with me as we finish off the illogic of this argument, if something appears to be slavery, the answer is to kill.

The mother is free to kill her unborn child to prevent a forced pregnancy. The mother or father is free to kill a born child because this precious one might be a burden. A son or daughter is free to kill a parent who needs round-the-clock care all in the name of the ending of slavery.

It is abhorrent to compare slavery with pregnancy. I recognize that not all who are pregnant made that choice. There are difficult cases, but to suggest that what slaves endured is what mothers face is perverse and wicked logic. 

Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review Online, as written a very similar article on this very subject that I would also highly recommend.

https://www.nationalreview.com/author/dan-mclaughlin/

[1] https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1546577990913597442

[2] Glenn W. McDonald, originally appeared in Reader’s Digest Magazine, cited by www.bible.org. (http://tinyurl.com/c2j7ff)

[3] https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/originalism-abortion-and-the-thirteenth-amendment