Dobbs v. Jackson (2022)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion. It was the culmination of a 50-year strategy. In Randall Balmer's account, Paul Weyrich and others elevated abortion because it was a more politically viable issue than the one that first galvanized them: IRS enforcement against segregated Christian schools. The Religious Right built its power, used that power to shape judicial appointments (Trump's three Supreme Court appointments, shaped substantially by the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation), and those justices delivered the ruling. What Dobbs also revealed: the strategy's success was not accompanied by a plan for what came next. Post-Dobbs polling showed majority opposition to abortion bans in most states. The issue that had been the movement's most reliable mobilization tool became, in victory, a political liability. Several Republican Senate candidates in 2022 lost in part because of Dobbs. The ruling itself does not end the story. States have moved in both directions. The deeper question the project asks — how did a position that was not particularly held by evangelicals in 1973 become a non-negotiable doctrinal test by 2022 — is answered by this entire map.

Themes this entry appears in

• Abortion Politics
• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Dobbs v. Jackson (2022)

• influenced → Planned Parenthood (2022) — The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade, was the culmination of fifty years of Religious Right organizing against Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights. The immediate effect was the closure or severe restriction of abortion services in more than half of American states, with many states simultaneously moving to defund Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursements. The ruling represented the full institutional payoff of the anti-Planned Parenthood campaign that the Moral Majority, FRC, ADF, and allied organizations had sustained since 1973.

Connections to Dobbs v. Jackson (2022)

• Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) influenced (2022) — Alliance Defending Freedom was among the most active organizations in the legal ecosystem that produced Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. ADF filed amicus briefs in Dobbs, provided legal analysis and strategy to state legislatures crafting the abortion restrictions that created the vehicle cases for overturning Roe, and trained law students through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, some of whom went on to legal and judicial careers. ADF's decades-long strategy of building test cases, training conservative lawyers, and cultivating judicial relationships was a direct tributary into the Dobbs result.
• The Federalist Society / Evangelical Judicial Pipeline influenced (2022) — The Federalist Society's four-decade judicial pipeline — identifying, vetting, networking, and tracking conservative legal talent for Republican judicial appointments — produced the Supreme Court majority that decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (June 24, 2022). All five justices in the Dobbs majority (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) were Republican appointees; three (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) were placed by Trump based on lists compiled with Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation input. Leonard Leo drove the Trump judicial selection process.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg influenced (2020) — Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020 — 46 days before a presidential election. Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority; Religious Right organizations pressed hard for the pre-election confirmation. Barrett's confirmation was the direct consequence of Ginsburg's death. Two years later, on June 24, 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling overturned Roe.
• Heritage Foundation influenced (2022) — Heritage helped compile Trump's 2016 list of potential Supreme Court nominees with the Federalist Society; Balmer and others see its judicial advocacy as part of what produced the Dobbs majority.
• Roe v. Wade influenced (2022) — Roe v. Wade's 1973 ruling legalizing abortion was the stated target of the Religious Right's judicial strategy across forty-nine years. The Federalist Society's judicial pipeline, the Heritage Foundation's judicial nomination process, the successive Republican presidencies that appointed conservative justices, and the Alliance Defending Freedom's litigation strategy were all oriented — in significant part — toward building a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, which held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and overruled both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was the culmination of that four-decade project.
• 2016 Election: The Machine Delivers influenced (2022) — The 2016 election was the decisive mechanism in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Trump's three Supreme Court appointments — Neil Gorsuch (2017), Brett Kavanaugh (2018), and Amy Coney Barrett (2020) — created the six-justice conservative supermajority that issued the Dobbs decision in 2022. Many evangelical leaders described their support for Trump as a trade — tolerating his character for judges — and Dobbs was the result they had sought.

Sources

• Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022) — Supreme Court of the United States (2022)
• Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 12-18