Abortion, Citizenship, and the Right to Travel

This article considers the changed landscape for abortion rights since the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Before Dobbs, the right to choose an abortion was a fundamental right under federal law, enforceable against all state governments. After Dobbs, the scope of one’s right to choose an abortion depends on the state in which one lives, and if abortion is illegal in their home state, their right to travel to another state where abortion is legal. The right to travel is particularly important for workers who must live in an anti-abortion state because their jobs are located there.

Yet some states and localities have enacted laws effectively banning the right to travel out of state to obtain abortions—and other states are considering such laws. This article considers the origins and scope of that right to travel, based in the efforts of fugitives from slavery and the activism of free Black people in the anti-slavery and civil rights movements. The article argues that the right to travel to obtain an abortion is essential to equal citizenship, protected by Article IV and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. States banning travel to obtain abortions also arguably impose involuntary servitudes on those travelers, violating the Thirteenth Amendment.