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Power Trip
The Roe War Rooms
Kavanaugh’s confirmation set the tables for an epic clash over abortion. Here’s how it could play out.
“I want to live to see the day that we put the sanctity of life back at the center of American law, and we send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.”
— Mike Pence, 2016
Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination may have sparked an unexpected clash over sexual assault and the #MeToo movement, but the hope and fear underlying his confirmation have always been about abortion. And now that he’s been confirmed, advocacy groups invested in the abortion wars have their sights set on potential post-Kavanaugh U.S. Supreme Court cases and strategies to win them. Medium called insiders on both sides to get a sense of how it could all play out.
Topline: Kavanaugh could, in short order, rule on 13 abortion cases, each of which hovers within reach of the Supreme Court and “provides an opportunity to overrule or severely weaken a woman’s constitutional right to access abortion,” according to a Planned Parenthood memo from September.