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The Supreme Court and the Social Conception of Abortion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Vincent Vecera
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Abstract

Skeptics of Supreme Court power have pointed to abortion policy as an example of surprising limits on the justices' power to change society. I argue, however, that the Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade played a critical role in transforming how Americans think and talk about abortion. I develop an account of the development of the social conception of abortion from a critical reading of twentieth century American journalism and then test some predictions of that account through the use of quantitative content analyses. I conclude by discussing some implications for the study of judicial politics and public constitutionalism.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 345 - 375
Copyright
© 2014 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank the editors and reviewers for their invaluable comments.

References

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