Four years after Dobbs, we have learned the limits of political power | Opinion

Four years ago this month, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a half-century of federal protection for abortion rights. Since then, Americans have been immersed in litigation, legislation, elections, and political debate about what Dobbs means and whether it achieved its intended goals.

Yet one of the most striking aspects of the post-Dobbs landscape is how little attention we pay to the underlying assumption at the heart of the decision itself.

Dobbs rests on the premise that the government can successfully regulate one of the most complex experiences in human life through increasingly detailed political control. It assumes that legislators and judges can draw clear legal boundaries around circumstances that are often medically, emotionally, and ethically complicated. Most importantly, it assumes that politicians can insert themselves into intensely personal decisions.

That assumption deserves far more scrutiny than it receives.

For much of U.S. history, debates about liberty have centered on the limits of government control. We have argued over taxation, land use, speech, religion, firearms, education, and privacy. We rarely agree on where those limits should be drawn, but we generally recognize that some areas of life are so personal and circumstance-dependent that government authority becomes difficult to justify. Pregnancy is one of those areas.

Every pregnancy unfolds differently. Medical conditions, family circumstances, economic realities, responsibilities, and obligations all vary. The farther we move from the actual people involved and the closer we move toward political institutions, the harder it becomes to accommodate that complexity.

Physicians have raised concerns about situations lawmakers never considered. Families have encountered circumstances that fit poorly within political frameworks designed to regulate them. Courts and legislatures have repeatedly returned to revise laws that failed to anticipate real-world circumstances. Far too often this happens only after grave consequences emerge. This reflects a deeper problem. Human lives are not particularly well suited to rigid political control.

Meanwhile, the need for abortion has not disappeared. The latest WeCount data show that abortions continue to occur nationwide at rates higher than those recorded before Roe fell. Dobbs altered access, certainly. It changed who bears burdens, who must travel, who can afford care, and who cannot. But it did not eliminate the circumstances that lead people to seek abortion.

After the Dobbs decision, perhaps the most important lesson is not about abortion at all. It is about power. The decision established a principle that should concern anyone who values personal liberty: when enough politicians disagree with a personal medical decision, they may claim the authority to make accessing care more difficult, more burdensome, or entirely unavailable.

Four years later, we can evaluate what that power accomplished. The evidence is striking. The need for abortion did not disappear. The circumstances that lead people to seek abortion did not disappear. Pregnancy remained as complex and deeply personal as ever. What changed was who carried the burden. Patients traveled farther. Families navigated greater uncertainty. Healthcare providers operated under increasing political constraints. At least 12 women have died as a direct result of an abortion ban.

In the end, Dobbs revealed the limits of government power over the most intimate realities of human life. Our lives are more complicated than public policy. Human beings are more resilient than political systems anticipate. And some decisions remain too personal, too nuanced, and too consequential to be managed from a legislative desk or a judicial bench.

That is not merely a lesson about abortion. It is a lesson about freedom.