Whenever abortion came up during my three decades working on criminal-justice reform, the interlocutor always took the attitude, “That’s someone else’s job.”
Not anymore. With the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, abortion once again became a criminal-justice issue in Texas, full stop.
The Court’s abandonment of Roe v. Wade—combined with a decision last year by Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature to reaffirm criminal statutes on abortion from the 1925 Penal Code if and when Roe ever fell—have suddenly dumped the abortion question back into the realm of criminal law.
