From God to the Supreme Court: The Religious Underpinnings of the Abortion Regret Doctrine

In its 2007 Carhart v. Gonzales decision, the United States Court upheld the federal ban on late-term abortions in order to protect women from abortion regret – an anti-abortion argument that began making an appearance in the latter part of the last century. Although recognizing that there is "no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," the Court nonetheless cited the Amicus Curie Brief of the Justice Foundation with its accompanying affidavits from "180 Women Injured by Abortion," to support this protectionist result. The Court’s reliance on a single amicus brief to justify a result that is at odds with the overwhelming weight of social science evidence is deeply troubling, particularly since anti-abortion activists are now relying on Carhart to support restrictions on abortion to protect women from, as now confidently asserted, the inevitable cascade of emotional harms. As the paternalistic valence of the abortion regret trope takes hold, it is important to recognize the revelatory origins of this doctrine’s appearance before the Supreme Court. As explained by the President of the Justice Foundation, this journey was inspired by God’s instruction to him to "collect the testimonies of women hurt by abortion and take them to the United States Supreme Court" in order to "refute the lie that abortion is good for women." In advancing a traumatic conception of abortion, the Court has validated a perspective that is animated by religious antipathy towards abortion as disruptive of the gendered ordering of the world in which motherhood is woman’s true vocation.