Demonstrations outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the day of arguments in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19- 1392, challenging a Mississippi law enacted in 2018 that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, on December 1, 2021. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
The recently issued Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case ends the right to abortion—but the pregnant person is largely absent from the majority opinion.
The opinion relies heavily on its distorted notion of our nation’s history and tradition and the absence of the word “abortion” in the Constitution. Citing to laws in colonial America and the 19th century, and even English legal treatises as far back as the 13th and 17th centuries, it concludes that there is no history or tradition of an abortion right in America.
