Viewpoints
Opinion

Would a Federal Law Legalizing Abortion Survive the Supreme Court?

Would a Federal Law Legalizing Abortion Survive the Supreme Court?
Abortion-rights demonstrators protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on May 10, 2022. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Rob Natelson
|Updated:
0:00
Commentary

Leading Democrats have announced that they want a federal statute overruling state laws that restrict abortion. In other words, they want Congress to legalize nearly unrestricted abortion nationwide. Obviously, such a law would intrude into an area of social policy traditionally left to the states.

Rob Natelson
Rob Natelson
Author
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, authored “The Original Constitution” (4th ed., 2025). He is a contributor to The Heritage Foundation’s “Heritage Guide to the Constitution.” He also researched and wrote the scholarly article “Virgil and the Constitution,” whose publication is pending in Regent University Law Review.
Related Topics