Preface to the Revised Edition

Extract This is a book about one of the Supreme Court’s most famous decisions, Roe v. Wade, and about the constitutional right to abortion a half century after it was first announced. But this book is about more than the decision in Roe itself. It is also about the role of courts in defining and enforcing fundamental rights in a constitutional democracy and how the work of courts necessarily interacts with and is affected by the work of legislatures, political parties, and social movements. The fifty years that followed the decision in Roe featured an almost continuous battle over its legitimacy that not only gradually chipped away at the abortion right but also had fateful consequences for the federal courts, for the American party system, and for American politics generally. And in 2022, decades of mobilization by abortion opponents culminated in the Supreme Court overruling Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.