SMU Law Review
ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)
Abstract
By severely limiting or outright banning abortion, states are requiring pregnant people to perform reproductive labor in the service of the state’s own interests. Unwilling pregnant people are compelled, through the force of law, to continue their pregnancies—to perform a task that is difficult, dangerous, and fundamentally alters their life’s course. The state justifies overcoming the pregnant person’s unwillingness by prioritizing its own interests in the continuation of the pregnancy—articulated at various times as an interest in potential life, the protection of health or the integrity of the medical profession, or the prevention of discrimination.
There is only one other scenario in which the Supreme Court has blessed such an aggressive vision of constitutionally allowable state-compelled service: conscription into the military.
This Article places these two circumstances side by side, comparing the nature of the state interests and the deprivations of liberty and property attendant to each. It then compares the circumstances in which unwilling military and reproductive conscripts are—or are not—entitled to rights of care, objection and exemption. This comparison not only sheds light on the constitutionality of abortion bans but also on potentially politically successful arguments against their continuation.
Recommended Citation
Meghan M. Boone,
The Pregnancy Draft,
79
SMU L. Rev.
343
(2026)
