Dobbs Decision: Abortion Politics Will Likely Heat Up

Editor’s note: This is the last in a series of articles (the previous three are here, here, and here) on the leaked Dobbs draft opinion and its implications.

If in the next few weeks the Dobbs case comes out in the form seen in the leaked draft opinion, it will represent not an end to the contentious politics of abortion, but the beginning of a new and likely much more intense phase of bitter controversy. The arrest yesterday of an armed man who planned to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh is an extreme instance of this intensity. While Justice Samuel Alito may hope that Dobbs will lower the temperature by removing the issue from the control of the federal judiciary and placing it with the political branches in the 50 states, the issue is in fact likely to heat up in several ways. Given the centripetal forces of American politics, the abortion controversy will still return to Washington, D.C., and the Supreme Court may well be dragged back into the fray regardless of its wishes. Rather than defusing the issue, Dobbs may put us on the cusp of a big bang in abortion politics.

About the Author

Steven F. Hayward

Steven F. Hayward is the Edward Gaylord Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

About the Author

John Yoo

John Yoo is the Thomas W. Smith Senior Fellow at the Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley; and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a co-author of the just-released two-volume American Constitutional Law (Routledge, 2026).

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Editor’s note: This is the last in a series of articles (the previous three are here, here, and here) on the leaked Dobbs draft opinion and its implications.

If in the next few weeks the Dobbs case comes out in the form seen in the leaked draft opinion, it will represent not an end to the contentious politics of abortion, but the beginning of a new and likely much more intense phase of bitter controversy. The arrest yesterday of an armed man who planned to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh is an extreme instance of this intensity. While Justice Samuel Alito may hope that Dobbs will lower the temperature by removing the issue from the control of the federal judiciary and placing it with the political branches in the 50 states, the issue is in fact likely to heat up in several ways. Given the centripetal forces of American politics, the abortion controversy will still return to Washington, D.C., and the Supreme Court may well be dragged back into the fray regardless of its wishes. Rather than defusing the issue, Dobbs may put us on the cusp of a big bang in abortion politics.

About the Author

Steven F. Hayward

Steven F. Hayward is the Edward Gaylord Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

About the Author

John Yoo

John Yoo is the Thomas W. Smith Senior Fellow at the Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley; and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a co-author of the just-released two-volume American Constitutional Law (Routledge, 2026).