Three years ago today, I was standing outside of the Supreme Court waiting for the Justices to issue the opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the case that held the potential to overturn half a century of politically fraught abortion law under Roe and Casey. At 10:10AM that day, the Court struck down the façade of abortion being a constitutionally protected right.
Leading up until that moment and to this day, the abortion lobby has used methods of fearmongering to scare the public, predicting the tragedies that will befall women when abortion is no longer protected in federal law.
I am happy to say that after three years of evidence, none of their nightmarish scare tactics have come true.
Abortion advocates have long used the object imagery of the “coat hanger” to push the lie that when women do not have access to legal abortion, they will turn to dangerous, self-induced methods. While the abortion lobby clings to their scare tactic term “back-alley,” the term actually undermines the fear of their nightmarish coat hanger. In reality, nearly all Pre-Roe abortions were still performed by doctors who moonlighted as illegal abortionists, letting women in through the “back alley” entrance to their clinics.
If safety was really a concern of abortion advocates, they would not be ushering in the new era of self-induced, chemical abortions.
While the measurement of maternal mortality is inherently flawed, especially when it comes to abortion, the overall measurement has actually decreased since Dobbs. According to the CDC, there were 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020 compared to the 18.6 deaths in 2023, the most recent data available. And although we cannot link causation between abortion restrictions and the maternal mortality rate, it is fair to look at the data and discredit the apocalyptic claims that women will die because of the overturning of Roe.
Recommended
But the abortion lobby stoked fear into the hearts of the empathetic public by creating the lie that surrounded experiences any woman might face. Abortion advocates told women that miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies would be criminalized, and treatment would be inaccessible.
In the 19 states that currently restrict abortion, every law includes provisions with exceptions to save the life of the mother, if not explicitly outlining protections for treatment of these conditions. Furthermore, these laws acknowledge the expertise of medical professionals and leave the reasonable judgement of “necessity” in the provider.
And when all else fails, the abortion lobby wants women to feel the imagined threat of imprisonment for obtaining an abortion from an equally made up, unempathetic opposition.
The overwhelming majority of the pro-life movement does not want to prosecute women in the midst of crisis and life-altering loss. For the 50 years between Roe and Dobbs, women have been wrongly convinced abortion is a moral choice – they have been convinced the babies in their wombs are nothing more than “clumps of cells.”
The pro-life movement’s target of justice instead lies upon the abortionist who has knowingly forsaken their oath to heal and protect – medical providers who know the biological realities of the living child in the womb and instead choose to ignore it. Every abortion restriction passed into law includes criminal and civil provisions to hold abortionists accountable for their illegal and dangerous abortion practices. Not a single law on the books prosecutes women.
Three years later, the evidence stands against those who have held an abortion-free future as a threat over the lives of women.
But as I reflect upon the lies long spun by abortion advocates, I must also face a sobering truth: Dobbs is not the end of the work to protect women. Pro-abortion advocates will continue to create and drive misinformation campaigns as a tactic to keep women from safety and truth the pro-life movement offers.
Instead of a dystopian nightmare predicted by many, there have been three years of laws enacted across many states to protect women from the harms of abortion. There have been three years of serving women at an increasing number of pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, and charitable clinics. There have been three years of abortion businesses closing down across the nation.
Three years have passed since Dobbs reversed the ultimate lie that abortion was a constitutional right and the world continues to turn, and women continue to be protected by pro-life efforts.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member