State Courts, Public Opinion, and the Changing Abortion Landscape after Dobbs

• In Event: Abortion Politics after Dobbs

Abstract

The June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization represented a seismic shift in abortion policy in the United States. Since then, state courts have begun playing a key role in expanding or restricting abortion access in their jurisdictions. What do these cases look like and how does the public respond to court decisions that are pro- or anti-abortion? We collect original data on state court abortion cases post-Dobbs and field two survey experiments pre- and post-Dobbs to investigate these questions. We find state courts have expanded their scope in abortion policy and that pro-abortion court decisions are consistently popular. Anti-abortion court decisions, however, are increasingly unpopular. Our paper suggests that state courts are a vital venue for abortion policymaking and that the public is growing frustrated with the countermajoritarian tendencies of courts.

Authors

• Anna M Gunderson, University of Texas, Austin

• Nichole Bauer, Louisiana State University

• Jeong Hyun Kim, Yonsei University