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 — a strategy that had been explicitly designed by Paul Weyrich and others not because of organic evangelical outrage over abortion, but because abortion was a more politically viable mobilization issue than the actual galvanizing grievance (racial segregation in Christian schools). The irony is layered: the Religious Right built its power on a constructed grievance, used that power to appoint judges (Trump's three Supreme Court appointments, shaped substantially by the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation), and those judges delivered the ruling. The machinery worked exactly as designed. 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.

Documented themes

• 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) — ADF was the central legal force in a sequence of Supreme Court cases that rolled back LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado (2018, baker's right to refuse same-sex couple), 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023, web designer's right to refuse same-sex wedding websites), and involvement in the litigation strategy culminating in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade. The Blackstone Fellowship placed ADF-trained attorneys in judicial clerkships that fed this pipeline.
• 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 the lawyers and judges — through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship — who populated the courts that heard those cases. 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 triggered (2020) — Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020 — 46 days before a presidential election. Religious Right organizations had been strategizing around this moment for years, calculating what her replacement would mean for abortion rights and LGBTQ equality. The rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the election — completed October 26, 2020 — was driven by Religious Right organizations who understood that a 6-3 conservative supermajority would be sufficient to overturn Roe v. Wade. 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. The four-decade campaign the Religious Right had built to control the Supreme Court's composition reached its culmination in the vacancy Ginsburg's death created.
• Heritage Foundation influenced (2022) — Heritage Foundation's judicial strategy — vetting and promoting conservative judges through the Federalist Society pipeline, and advising Republican administrations on judicial appointments — directly produced the court majority that decided Dobbs.
• Roe v. Wade triggered (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. Roe created the mission; Dobbs completed it.
• 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. The evangelical community's explicit bargain in supporting Trump — political and moral compromise in exchange for judges — was consummated in Dobbs. Researchers Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry documented that among white evangelicals, judicial appointments were the single most cited reason for supporting Trump in 2016, above any other policy priority.

Sources

• Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 12-18