ity for the Child Custody Protection ActH.R. 1218 is a regulation of commerce among the several states. Commerce, as that term is used in the Constitution, includes travel whether or not that travel is for reasons of business.(32) To transport another person across state lines is to engage in commerce among the states. There is thus no need to address the scope of Congress' power to regulate activity that is not, but that affects, commerce among the States.(33) Under current Supreme Court jurisprudence, Congress can adopt rules concerning interstate commerce, such as this one, for reasons related primarily to local activity rather than commerce itself.(34) The interstate transportation of minors for the purposes of securing an abortion is, therefore, clearly a form of interstate commerce which the Constitution expressly empowers Congress to regulate.(35) H.R. 1218 only regulates conduct which involves interstate movement, activity which the national government alone is expressly authorized by the Constitution to address.B. Roe v. Wade and the Child Custody Protection ActIn Roe v. Wade,(36) a majority of the Supreme Court found that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which provides that no state shall deprive any person of "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law, includes within it a "substantive" component which bars a state from prohibiting abortions under some circumstances. This substantive component of the Due Process Clause, also described in that case as including a "right to privacy," has been held to forbid virtually all state prohibitions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.(37) In Planned Parenthood v. Casey,(38) the scope of permissible state regulation of abortion and the standards to be applied in evaluating the constitutionality of the regulation were significantly changed. Instead of declaring that the right to seek an abortion was a "fundamental right" requiring a "compelling s...
