How Political Campaigns' Inability to Repeal Criminal Abortion Regulations in the 1960s and 1970s Ultimately Led to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision

• In Event: Legal Doctrines and Their Political Effects

Abstract

Given the legal, social and political history of abortion, the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was not unexpected. For many, Dobbs exposed the archaic, nineteenth-century criminal framework underpinning abortion law in the United States.

In the nineteenth-century, when abortion was first criminalized across jurisdictions in the United States, the deleterious impact of criminal abortion statutes on the health/well-being of pregnant individuals spurred calls for reform. By the 1960s, supporters of liberalizing abortion law initially pursued reform – believing that it would reduce mortality and morbidity associated with illicit abortion. It soon became clear that piecemeal reform measures across the U.S. were inadequate. Such reforms, based on an American Law Institute template, did not meet the needs of the majority of those seeking to terminate particular pregnancies. Because of such inadequacy, by the late 1960s, many individuals, organizations and political figures (including conservatives) sought the outright repeal of criminal abortion statutes. The salience of repeal resonated because only repealing criminal regulations would: remove abortion from criminal codes; ensure reproductive health care remained a private decision between pregnant individuals and health care providers; remove reproductive health decisions from governmental intrusion; and regulate abortion through customary health codes as other health care is regulated. It is significant that other common law countries such as Canada have successfully implemented abortion law repeal.

As part of this research, in 2015 I interviewed six prominent British and North American abortion rights advocates of the 1960s and 1970s.
Nancy Pietroforte, PhD (law)

Author

• Nancy Pietroforte, Kentucky State University