In his concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Brett Kavanaugh went to great pains to reassure Americans that their ability to get an abortion is not under threat. He wrote, "the Court's decision today does not outlaw abortion throughout the United States." (Emphasis his.) While he briefly mentions that Congress can always pass a national ban, he largely skates by that possibility to focus on how Dobbs technically "does not prevent the numerous States that readily allow abortion from continuing to readily allow abortion."
Implicit in Kavanaugh's argument was an assumption that, so long as middle and upper class people feel they will always have access, by and large they will not care if people who are too constrained by poverty to travel are forced into unwanted childbirth. But Kavanaugh also underestimated how determined the Christian right, through the Republican party, is to make sure that no one — outside of the very wealthy who can travel out of country — has access to abortion. As soon as it became clear that pro-choice activists were having real success protecting abortion rights in some states — and not just in blue states, but places like Kansas and Minnesota — anti-choice activists started to strategize about how to prevent people from getting abortions by simply hopping in a car or on a plane.
