Unleashed: Anti-choice extremism empowered by the Dobbs decision

Released from all restraint, the tentacled prerogatives of the anti-choice movement are now reaching into multiple aspects of Americans' private lives

Two years ago today, “five justices wiped out millions of women’s access to basic health care and handed control over their medical decisions to politicians and judges.”¹ In a single decision, the Supreme Court diminished the status of Americans unlucky enough to be born female to that of a biologically-determined servant class, no longer equally protected by the law, yet still bound by it — their dreams and futures subject to the tyranny of biology, and their bodies subject to coercive use by the government to advance its own interests. Gone are the days when “the government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life,” nor “determine what the woman’s future would be.”²

“To manifest respect for a woman as a mother while manifesting disrespect for a woman’s health care decisions is to perpetuate a value-laden, sex-based stereotype. Women’s reproductive capacity and their ability to become mothers traditionally has long been used as justification for perpetuating [inequality] between the sexes.”³

In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, “the Court struck a balance, as it often does when values and goals compete. It held that the State could prohibit abortions after fetal viability, so long as the ban contained exceptions to safeguard a woman’s life or health.” In the 2022 Dobbs v. Jakson Women’s Health decision, “the Court discarded[] that balance.”⁴— “It said[] that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of.”⁵

The five unelected justices - three of them nominated by Donald Trump and confirmed by the then-Republican controlled Senate for the purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade - took power out of the hands of individuals to make decisions about their health, their lives, and their families; determined that a chauvinist “State can force [women] to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs”;⁶ empowered revanchist politicians to codify inequality and unequal protection into state and federal laws and policies; “tore away the constitutional right to privacy and bodily autonomy”;⁷ and enshrined the “antiquated and misogynistic notion that a woman has no say over what happens to her own body.”⁸ But that’s not all…

The five unelected justices also removed the restraints on the extremist and unpopular movement against reproductive health rights, unleashing those dedicated to forcing women into conformity with antiquated gender roles, and to forcing families into conformity with authoritarian religious notions of when to conceive, how to conceive, and how build a family. 

In the two years since the Dobbs decision unleashed the absolutist prerogatives of the anti-reproductive-rights movement upon all Americans, that movement has only become more emboldened and grown more extreme. The movement’s tentacles are now reaching into multiple aspects of Americans’ private lives: access to contraception; choice in contraceptive methods; emergency medical care; the right to travel; free speech; sex education; the preservation of democracy; women’s right to vote; equal participation in society; the ability to make decisions about tragic complications in pregnancy; access to needed medications; scientific research; medical school training; residency programs; criminalized possession of medications; maternity care deserts; doctors shortages; health insurance coverage; the ability to decline invasive medical procedures; the ability to choose the safest medical procedures in medical emergencies; forced cesarean surgeries; the ability to divorce an abusive spouse; the death penalty for abortion patients; the ability to keep and raise one’s own children; the right to become a parent; and the use of assisted reproductive technology to build a family. The fingers of the anti-choice movement continue to spread outward, unbridled by Dobbs.

“The question is no longer just whether you can get an abortion, but also, Can you get one if pregnancy complications put you in septic shock? Can you find an obstetrician when so many are leaving states with bans? If you miscarry, will the hospital send you home to bleed? Can you and your partner do in vitro fertilization?”⁹

For the totalitarian movement against human rights and individual choice, it’s a zero-sum game.

As the anti-choice movement continues to lose support and credibility in the eyes of voters, the movement will only become more desperate; and in that desperation, the movement against Americans’ reproductive health rights will only become more dangerous, more anti-democratic, and more draconian. All thanks to Dobbs.

1. Lithwick, D., & Stern, M. J. (2024, January 30). A State Supreme Court just issued the most devastating rebuke of Dobbs yet. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/pennsylvania-supreme-court-dobbs-sam-alito-abortion.html

2. Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan. (2022a, June 27). Key quotes from Dobbs. V. Jackson decision • biblical recorder. Biblical Recorder. https://www.brnow.org/news/key-quotes-from-dobbs-v-jackson-decision/

3. Wecht, D. (2024, January 29). Concurring Opinion, Allegheny Reprod. Health v. PA DHS. https://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/J-65-2022co%20-%20105815658253413062.pdf?cb=1

4. Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan. (2022a, June 27). Key quotes from Dobbs. V. Jackson decision • biblical recorder. Biblical Recorder. https://www.brnow.org/news/key-quotes-from-dobbs-v-jackson-decision/

5. Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan. (2022a, June 27). Key quotes from Dobbs. V. Jackson decision • biblical recorder. Biblical Recorder. https://www.brnow.org/news/key-quotes-from-dobbs-v-jackson-decision/

6. Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan. (2022a, June 27). Key quotes from Dobbs. V. Jackson decision • biblical recorder. Biblical Recorder. https://www.brnow.org/news/key-quotes-from-dobbs-v-jackson-decision/

7. Ford, A. D. (n.d.). Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision. https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Dobbs_v__Jackson_Women_s_Health_Organization_Supreme_Court_Decision/#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court’s%20decision%20in,did%20not%20ban%20abortions%20nationwide

8. Wecht, D. (2024, January 29). Concurring Opinion, Allegheny Reprod. Health v. PA DHS. https://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/J-65-2022co%20-%20105815658253413062.pdf?cb=1

9. Zernike, K. (2024, June 24). Abortion debate shifts as election nears: “now it’s about pregnancy.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/abortion-roe-wade-pregnancy.html