The Race Card

Amid the tumult surrounding the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the June 24 ruling that ended Roe v. Wade, one curious detail went largely overlooked. Nestled among Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments laying waste to nearly 50 years of abortion precedent was an unassuming footnote documenting a narrative advanced in amicus briefs submitted to the high court. These “friend of the court” briefs, Alito explained, “present arguments about the motives” of people and groups favoring “liberal access to abortion,” namely “that some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population.”

Portraying abortion as a tool of racial genocide is not a bridge too far, Alito insisted: “It is beyond dispute that has had that demographic effect,” given that a “highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.” He also cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in 2019’s , a challenge to an Indiana law that prohibited abortions undertaken for reasons of race or sex selection, or nonlethal fetal anomalies. The justices, Thomas included, had deferred consideration of such “reason bans” for