The New Politics of the Dobbs Era Abortion War
The psychological pull of an ultrasound will be accompanied by the face of a grown woman in handcuffs.
A few years from now, or perhaps even sooner, a woman will be raped and pursue an abortion, a procedure which will be unlawful in much of the upside down T inside the country, from the Midwest down through the sprawling South.
In Texas or Missouri or maybe Wisconsin, this woman will find a sympathetic gynecological surgeon, willing to discreetly defy state law to end the undesired pregnancy.
But someone, perhaps a churchgoing family member or a disgruntled colleague of the doctor, will get wind of the plan and tip off authorities.
This woman will be arrested, prosecuted and immediately thrust into the next generation’s clash over abortion, a post Roe v. Wade era now defined by Dobbs, as in Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s chief health officer whose name appears on the landmark case against an abortion clinic in Jackson, Miss. simply due to his position in state government.
This Dobbs era holds the potential to be more odious, tempestuous and harrowing than anything the long-running abortion fight has seen over the past five decades.
The psychological pull of an ultrasound, if not replaced, will now be accompanied by the face of a fully grown woman in handcuffs.
This is no longer a hypothetical.