Our country has changed dramatically since we sent Tearing Us Apart to the printer in early 2022. Not much has changed about our conclusions, but they have taken on new detail and dimension in light of the past year’s events. It didn’t much surprise us that the Supreme Court overturned Roe, but while we expected to see an intense backlash to the decision, we couldn’t have predicted the new and frightening tenor of the abortion debate.
After someone inside the Court leaked a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs, progressive activists staged protests outside the homes of the justices who were reported to be in the majority — and they continued demonstrating outside their homes long after the ruling was released. One man, angry about the possibility of Roe being overturned, went so far as to bring a gun to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s neighborhood, saying that he intended to assassinate him. A nationwide network of violent activists calling themselves Jane’s Revenge began a coordinated campaign against pregnancy-resource centers, involving vandalism, firebombing, and attempted arson.
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