What We Keep Getting Wrong About Abortion
After the Supreme Court’s stunning leak last week, it is finally dawning on the public that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will likely mark the end of constitutional protections for abortion rights. The Court’s decision to take up the case, coupled with its failure to even temporarily protect Texas women from an unconstitutional post-six-week abortion ban last fall, clearly signaled this outcome. Yet Roe’s core vulnerability lies not with the justices voting to strike it down. It derives from how the issue was framed in the first place—as a question of an individual’s “reproductive rights” and not one of the proper scope of government.
With a couple of exceptions (such as its prohibitions on “ex post facto” laws that criminalize conduct retroactively and “bills of
