Editors at National Review Online assess the impact of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Pro-lifers have been so understandably preoccupied with the new challenges and difficulties of a post-Roe America that they have insufficiently celebrated the fact that we are now living in that America. For nearly 50 years, the Supreme Court had pretended that the Constitution protects abortion from democratic regulation, notwithstanding the lack of support for that proposition in its text, logic, structure, or original understanding. The justices who renounced that lie in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center exposed themselves to scurrilous criticisms and even threats to their safety. They merit praise for striking a blow for constitutional fidelity and for human rights, rightly considered.
The great danger of that moment was that a political backlash — abetted by a furious media and timorous politicians — would lead to a restoration of the policy of Roe. Had the Democrats won across the board in 2024, they might well have moved to put abortion on demand into national law. Their victory would certainly have been claimed to demonstrate the popularity of that policy. And at that point, many Republicans would have treated the issue as settled.
It didn’t happen. In the first elections held after Dobbs, Republicans regained control of the House. Every pro-life incumbent won in Senate and governor’s races, with the latter group including people who had signed into law major protections for unborn children. In red and even some purple states, politicians can enact such protections and thrive.
The political setbacks that pro-lifers have experienced, tragic though they are, also need to be put in the context of Roe’s effective legalization of abortion at any stage of pregnancy. There was nowhere to go but up. The states that have legislated in favor of abortion since Dobbs largely stuck with the status quo or defeated entirely disorganized opposition. Nearly two dozen other states have restricted abortion to some degree.
