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The Supreme Court and the Social Conception of Abortion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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.
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- © 2014 Law and Society Association.
Footnotes
The author wishes to thank the editors and reviewers for their invaluable comments.
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