One Year Later: America Through the Post-Dobbs Lens
One year ago, Roe v. Wade fell. A horrific and deadly court ruling that gripped our nation for nearly fifty years can no longer inhibit efforts to protect unborn life. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization returned the authority to regulate abortion to the states, creating a very divided response across the country. America looks very different now than she did last year. The entire landscape in the fight for life has shifted. Roe no longer strangles any legislative efforts to ban abortions, leaving the door open to life-saving legislation. Pro-abortion advocates who are challenging these new laws are left to turning to their state courts and attempting to make the same “right to privacy” argument under their state constitutions that they made on the federal level.
The results for state legislative battles have varied widely across the country. Most Southern states have enacted total abortion bans or heartbeat laws (6 weeks). This includes several midwestern states as well. Yet in juxtaposition to their southern neighbors, many Northern and Westcoast states have done the opposite by either allowing abortions up till birth (Oregon, Colorado, and Nevada) or limiting it until the child is viable outside of the womb while either loosely defining viability, leaving it up to a doctor, or granting a whole host of easily exploitable exemptions to the ban.
In the past year, state court battles have also played out with varying results. Recently, a lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in Kentucky, allowing that state to continue to protect unborn children. Other states, such as Arizona, are being halted from protecting the unborn by injunctions that apply while the litigation continues. With the political division in the state courts and legislature, the battle for life is taking different shapes across the country.
For Virginia, we remain the only state in the south that has not enacted an abortion ban and has instead become a target for “abortion tourism,” as our sister states have made abortion illegal. Virginia is a deeply politically divided commonwealth, with abortion being the forerunning issue in our recent primaries. Abortion advocates seek to make Virginia a sanctuary for abortion, with legislators bought and paid for by Planned Parenthood introducing constitutional amendments to guarantee legal abortions up till birth in past General Assembly sessions (which thankfully have failed each time). The fight for control of the Virginia legislature in this 2023 election will determine Virginia’s course. With a pro-life executive branch, we can expect any pro-life measures to be signed should they pass through the legislature. But they will no doubt face litigation. But it is worth the fight.
“[T]he 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.”[1] These words will forever live in memory. and have paved the way to save countless lives. While the chess moves have changed, the fight has not. We continue to celebrate the great victory that occurred a year ago today and every child that is alive today because of it. For the 930,160 lives that are still lost every year to abortion, we keep fighting: no matter the challenges. And we can take heart that the Lord is with us in this fight. “So he answered, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’” 2 Kings 6:16.
[1] Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2279 (2022).
