The Alliance Defending Freedom has been laying the groundwork to end legal abortion for years. But that’s just the beginning.
By Amy Littlefield
Abortion Access Correspondent
The Nation
In January 2018, attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom outlined a plan to “eradicate Roe” that is now coming to fruition. Speaking at the Evangelicals for Life conference, ADF senior counsel Denise Burke announced that just that week, state lawmakers in Mississippi had introduced the nation’s first-ever 15-week abortion ban. Based on ADF’s model legislation, the bill was designed to provoke a challenge from abortion rights groups that, ADF hoped, would make its way to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and then on to the Supreme Court.
“We’re kind of basically baiting them; come on, fight us on turf that we have already set up and established,” Burke said, according to audio provided by Peter Montgomery of Right Wing Watch, who reported on the panel at the time. “Once we get these first-trimester limitations in place, we’re going to go for a complete ban on abortion, except to save the life of the mother.”
Almost four years later, that plan is on track. On December 1, that 15-week ban, now on the books but enjoined in Mississippi, will give the Supreme Court’s three Trump-appointed justices their first real opportunity to reshape legal abortion. For decades, the Christian Right’s legal and judicial wings have worked together to bring about this moment. The Federalist Society hand-picked the justices for Trump to appoint the Supreme Court. ADF wrote the law at issue in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that will give those justices the opportunity to overhaul Roe v. Wade.