Transformative Supreme Court rulings can transform aspects of not just the legal world. On June 24, 2022 the United States Supreme Court issued the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, effectively overruling two landmark cases that formerly stood as precedent, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey. The more obvious and quickly considered impact of the Dobbs ruling deals directly with stare decisis, the notion that holds that courts and judges should honor the decisions, rulings, and opinions from prior cases. Associate Justice Samuel Alito outlines the Court's rationale for revisiting the landmark abortion decisions, at times wavering in subjective analysis of the Roe and Casey opinions that reflects overly critical considerations not relevantly implicated in the Roe and Casey majority decision. While these stare decisis guidelines are transformative, they are not the only impacts worth noting and the paper explores these further. Utilizing 2021 and 2022 data from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey, this paper utilizes a quantitative approach to investigate how levels of abortion support and confidence in the Supreme Court may have changed. Findings show a statistically significant increase in abortion support and decrease in confidence in the Court post-Dobbs, even when controlling for partisanship and gender. These findings are accompanied with further devastating impacts including growing legal challenges arising in Alabama relating to in-vitro fertilization and Idaho's compliance with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. These findings indicate a much stronger reaction from the American public and from American legislators to restrict abortion access than had taken place after the Roe ruling, proving crucial to understand as a means of gauging social perception surrounding the Dobbs ruling.
Zuzanna Kubiszewska (Sat,) studied this question.