Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the DC Federal District Court, hearing a criminal case about anti-choice activists blocking access to an abortion clinic on Monday, questioned whether the Supreme Court’s controversial Dobbs decision addressed all Constitutional rights for abortion, leading to the possibility of a challenge to re-assert the right, Politico reports.

A Clinton appointee, Kollar-Kotelly told lawyers to prepare arguments concerning the possibility that Dobbs only addressed the legal arguments against abortion as raised in Roe v. Wade, but failed to fully revoke the right to choose because the right is included in other parts of the Constitution, specifically in Kollar-Kotelly’s view in the 13th Amendment.

The question is addressable by this court because one of the defendants claims an included conspiracy charge is now moot because the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision removed the Constitution right to an abortion.  “There is no longer a federal constitutional interest to protect, and Congress lacks jurisdiction,” the defendant’s attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss the charge. “The Dobbs court did not indicate that there is no longer a constitutional right to abortion; the court has made clear there never was.”

Kollar-Kotelly noted that the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, which she noted has been the basis for other scholarly support for the right to abortion.  Kollar-Kotelly asked the lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense to prepare by mid-March arguments about ”whether the scope of Dobbs is in fact confined to the Fourteenth Amendment” and “whether, if so, any other provision of the Constitution could confer a right to abortion as an original matter … such that Dobbs may or may not be the final pronouncement on the issue, leaving an open question.”