As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Paragraph 4 of 5

Sentence 4 of 7

I get two claims from this sentence:

“Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views.”

The claims:

• “[T]hose who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life” are “on the losing side.”
• “Those on the losing side [. . .] could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views.”

Before I get into the claims, I should mention that the framing of competition makes me a little uncomfortable. This isn’t a contest, and if the law is applied in a neutral and objective way the “winner” would be the “side” with the case that best aligns with reality, right?

The first claim is true to the extent that the Court decided against the people who think the State is the appropriate level at which these decisions should be made. But the point of Casey (and of Roe) is that the right to an abortion is not up for debate at the state level. Dobbs criticizing Casey for doing what it did because it did what it did seems to miss the whole point. Of course legislatures couldn’t manage the issue at the state level—Roe and Casey both concluded that the abortion issue wasn’t an appropriate issue to be decided at that level.

The second claim isn’t literally true, but I think it’s true in the way the author meant it. Pro-life people were still free to “seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views,” but there wasn’t much that legislators could do in response, and the legislators couldn’t do anything to immediately affect the issue through legislation.

Legislatures did take action in the service of pro-life causes though. According to the Guttmacher Institute, thirteen states had laws ready to take effect when the Dobbs decision was announced, and even more states were ready to act on behalf of pro-life parties at the first opportunity:

“All signs point to anti-abortion ideologues on the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade outright in the coming weeks. If that happens, 26 states are certain or likely to move quickly to ban abortion, devastating abortion access across large parts of the country and causing potentially severe health, financial and emotional consequences for people, especially those in marginalized communities.

“Of those 26 states, 13 have laws in place that are designed to be “triggered” and take effect automatically or by quick state action if Roe no longer applies—Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

There’s some loaded language there, but the facts check out. Even though I’m comfortable calling this second claim false, I’ll leave it undetermined for this project because it deserves more discussion.

This leaves me with one true claim:

• “[T]hose who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life” are “on the losing side.”

And one undetermined claim:

• “Those on the losing side [. . .] could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views.”