It’s been a year since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned both Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, effectively returning the issue of regulating abortion to the states. “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the ruling read.
The decision sent Democrats into a collective hissy fit, attacking the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and suggesting that the ruling had horrible implications, not just for women, but the entire nation.
The arguments of the pro-abortion left predicted the worst and implied some utter falsehoods, namely that abortion had instantly become illegal across the United States. It was nearly impossible to browse social media without seeing posts from pro-abortion activists insisting that the Supreme Court had made women second-class citizens, insinuating that their rights have been unjustly stripped away.
A friend, convinced of this absurd rhetoric, told me after the ruling that she wanted to move to Canada after the ruling because, according to her, the United States hates women. A year later, she’s still an American citizen. A year later, pro-abortion activists have all learned, even if they refuse to admit it, that our nation has endured despite abortion being left to the states to regulate. I know, crazy right? Imagine that.
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But that’s not stopping the radical pro-abortion left, including the so-called Catholic Joe Biden, from exaggerating the implications of Dobbs. “One year ago today, the Supreme Court took away a constitutional right [sic] from the American people, denying women across the nation the right to choose,” he falsely claimed. “Overturning Roe v. Wade, which had been the law of the land for nearly half a century, has already had devastating consequences.”
Biden continued, “States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.”
While several states have restricted abortion or even fully banned it, there are plenty of states that haven’t. Even states where abortion has gestational restrictions weren’t likely to see a huge reduction in abortions, as polls have shown that support for abortion drops significantly each trimester and the vast majority of abortions take place within the first trimester.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 89% of abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while a mere 1.3% are performed after 20 weeks. In fact, in the year since Dobbs, abortions are only down about 3%. This is certainly welcome news for the pro-life movement but still reflects only a modest impact that Dobbs has had on abortion rates. Gestational limits are well within the mainstream of Americans’ views on abortion.
And so our nation endures, despite the apocalyptic predictions of the radical pro-abortion left.
