The Supreme Court and the Social Conception of Abortion

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.