The Supreme Court surprised no one by eliminating the Constitutional right to abortion conferred by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The path to this decision was littered with machinations, deceit, and egotism. It was also fueled by the moral suasion that animates much of contemporary evangelical Christianity.

This moment would not have occurred without Mitch McConnell blockading the appointment of Merrick Garland in 2016 and expediting the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. It would not have occurred if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had fully acknowledged her recurring cancer and health problems instead of resisting calls to retire during Obama’s second term in office. And it might not have occurred if Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett hadn’t lied about their abortion views during confirmation proceedings.

However, there is reason to believe Roe and Casey were destined to be overruled. After all, the Supreme Court has always been a political institution, not one that merely adjudicates the law.

When Chief Justice John Marshall penned the majority opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), he was not operating in a vacuum. Marshall was the last justice appointed by a president from the Federalist party, and he faithfully advanced Federalist priorities – like granting SCOTUS the power to nullify laws passed by Congress – throughout his tenure.

In 1937 FDR threatened to pack the court with additional justices to eliminate judicial challenges to his New Deal policies. When Justice Owen Roberts votes on West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, it marked the beginning of an era of judicial capitulation to Roosevelt’s agenda referred to as “the switch in time that saved nine.”

To strive for continuity, the court adopted a principle known as stare decisis which encourages judges to respect precedents in prior case law. History shows that stare decisis can be ignored. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren court held that racially segregated schooling was unconstitutional, overturning a 58-year- old precedent, Plessy v. Ferguson.

The Warren court (1953-1969) was particularly active in creating an expanding group of civil liberties. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Warren court held that a right to privacy implied within the Constitution protects the use of contraceptives by married couples. The Burger court (1969-1986) built on the right to privacy identified in Griswold when it struck down abortion regulations in Roe. The Rehnquist court (1986-2005) used similar reasoning to strike down laws criminalizing sodomy in Lawrence v. Kansas.

The Constitution is textually silent on the rights established in Brown, Griswold, Roe, and Lawrence. Instead, SCOTUS held that they were implied under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which prohibits governments from depriving a person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Advocates for an evolving Constitution revered the Warren court for its expansive interpretations of what liberty means. Critics called it legislating from the bench.

Since 1973 abortion supporters have been content with a status quo where the values of nine individuals, rather than the democratic process that leads to an Amendment, created a civil right that stare decisis required lower courts to view as settled law. But as Brown demonstrated, a living Constitution can be reinterpreted.

The Warren court did not overturn Plessy after 58 years because new data demonstrated an adverse impact from segregated education. It did so because the political orientation of SCOTUS had changed.

Dobbs v. Jackson asked if deference to precedent was sufficient to protect the relatively weak Constitutional logic set forth in Roe and Casey from the revisionist impulses of a more conservative Roberts court.

Since Roe, 15 new justices have joined the bench. All but six of them have voted to endorse Roe in one way or another, some robustly, some reluctantly. Five of the six that refused now comprise the group that overturned Roe.

That block is clearly prepared to ignore established precedents and overturn legacy case law. It is also clear that religious impulses are the animating force behind this new majority’s desire to rewrite history.

We know precisely where those revanchist tendencies could lead next. In his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

On the one hand, it is absurd that nine unelected individuals should be the final arbiters of controversial social issues. Democratic legitimacy suggests that these issues should be resolved by the people and their elected representatives.

And if it was decided by a direct national vote, abortion would remain legal. Polling shows roughly 60% of Americans favor some legal access to abortion.

On the other hand, we are now confronting a judicial theocracy that apparently favors criminalizing not just abortion, but also birth control, same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage.

What animates this illiberal crusade? Many, including Justice Samuel Alito, argue that Roe itself spawned the culture war backlash that eventually culminated in Dobbs.

In the first year after Roe 14 abortions were performed per 100,000 women between the ages of 15-44. By 1980 abortions peaked at 25 per 100,000 women. In the ensuing decades the abortion rate steadily declined (in 2020 it again stood at 14 per 100,000) but the perception that legalized abortion was enabling promiscuous behavior had solidified in some quarters.

In the 1980s, the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination) drafted resolutions that for the first time referred to fetuses as “unborn humans” and declared that “abortion ends the life of a developing human being.” Decades of religiously motivated political activism followed this change.

Many evangelicals believe that promiscuous sexual norms, a growing proportion of single parent families, and the expansion of gay rights are root causes of societal decay. Many also blame those trends on the availability of contraception and abortion.

Organized religious observance is declining, but morally justified political activism is not. The future will soon reveal whether Roe’s demise was truly about preserving fetal life or instead was just the beginning of a broader religious crusade to control the sexual mores of others.