In the wake of the United States Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)Footnote
1, state courts have emerged as central sites for contesting and redefining abortion. Existing scholarship on abortion storytelling has focused largely on individuals, advocates, and legislators, emphasizing how personal narratives shape public opinion and policymaking. This essay shifts analytic attention to a less visible but highly consequential set of narrators: courts. It argues that judicial opinions do more than resolve legal disputes; they are institutional stories that construct abortion’s meaning.
Research on abortion politics demonstrates that the way abortion is described can affect how it is understood and evaluated. Hansen (Reference Hansen2025), for example, finds that support for reproductive policies varies with the language used to characterize them, including whether abortion medication is called “physician prescribed” or “chemical” and whether abortion involves an “embryo” or a “pre-born infant.” Other research finds that competing frames change the persuasiveness of abortion restrictions (Roberti, Morgan, and Krumbholz Reference Roberti, Morgan and Krumbholz2026) and that abortion politics became increasingly framed in terms of medical necessity, particularly in abortion-rights arguments (Skinner Reference Skinner2012). Courts are another site where these choices about language matter.
In judicial opinions, courts do more than apply doctrine to fact. In recounting events and explaining outcomes, courts construct abortion as a particular kind of act — shaping how it is understood and when it warrants legal recognition or restraint (Black et al. Reference Black, Owens, Wedeking and Wohlfarth2016; Goelzhauser and Cann Reference Goelzhauser and Cann2014). In doing so, courts participate in the political construction of abortion, influencing not only legal rules but how abortion is publicly understood.
Drawing on an analysis of post-Dobbs state appellate court cases,Footnote
2 this essay identifies two dominant forms of abortion storytelling that emerge in different areas of law but together define abortion’s legal and political meaning. In normative storytelling, most visible in constitutional and rights-based cases, courts evaluate abortion’s moral status, often framing it through competing claims about autonomy, fetal life, and medical care. In evidentiary storytelling, most common in criminal cases, abortion appears as a fact within the logic of criminal proof — used to establish motive, intent, or harm — without sustained attention to lived experience or moral dimensions. These forms differ but work in tandem to channel how abortion is understood within the law.
Centering judicial storytelling advances three contributions. It conceptualizes courts as narrators, shows how narratives shape abortion’s meaning, and demonstrates that constitutional and criminal law tell different kinds of stories that converge to limit how abortion is publicly and legally understood. Examining how courts narrate abortion clarifies how judicial decisions reinforce particular understandings of gender, sexuality, and state responsibility, even as formal doctrine remains in flux. More broadly, this essay invites scholars to treat judicial narratives as a mechanism through which abortion is politically constructed, governed, and contested in the post-Dobbs era.
Normative Storytelling: Moralizing Abortion in Constitutional Cases
In constitutional and rights-based cases, courts engage in normative storytelling: narrative practices that evaluate abortion’s moral status while resolving legal disputes (Budziak, Hitt, and Lempert Reference Budziak, Hitt and Lempert2019; Budziak and Lempert Reference Budziak and Lempert2023; Haire, Moyer, and Treier Reference Haire, Moyer and Treier2013). Political scientists have long recognized that judges are not neutral arbiters; rather, their decisions reflect policy preferences. Yet these preferences are often obscured by the language of judicial opinions, which shape how the law is understood and applied over time (Ewick and Silbey Reference Ewick and Silbey1998; Matthews Reference Matthews2022). Judicial decisions are not simply applications of doctrine; they also express the values the law protects and the harms it recognizes (Maltby and Matthews Reference Maltby and Matthews2025). These commitments emerge through the way courts describe facts, harms, and legal claims.
The language of judicial opinions is thus contested terrain. Courts construct abortion differently depending on the outcome they reach, producing an asymmetrical pattern of moralization. Courts protecting abortion access describe abortion through clinical (Skinner Reference Skinner2012) and constitutional language, for example referring to “abortion care” (North Dakota), “qualified medical professionals” and “medical procedures” (Wyoming), and decisions based on “medically and objectively observable evidence” (South Carolina).Footnote
3 These opinions also invoke constitutional concepts such as “privacy” and “personal autonomy” (North Dakota and Montana) and “self-determination” (Kansas).Footnote
4 When moral language does appear in pro-rights decisions — as in a Wisconsin concurrence emphasizing women’s experiences (Kaul v. Urmanski 2025)Footnote
5 — it stands out precisely because it departs from the dominant narrative style.
By contrast, anti-abortion decisions invoke explicitly moral language, framing abortion in terms of “the life of the unborn” (South Carolina), “protecting prenatal life” (Indiana), or a “right to kill unborn children” (North Dakota).Footnote
6 One Wisconsin decision emphasizes that a fetus did not consent to an abortion, while courts in Texas refer to medical providers as “abortionists.”Footnote
7 Other opinions characterize abortion as “elective” (Arizona, Missouri, and Texas) or “on demand” (Indiana and North Dakota).Footnote
8 These choices do more than describe legal positions; they signal which interests are treated as morally important and whose claims are legitimate. Courts thus adopt and amplify specific moral vocabularies within judicial opinions.
This asymmetry is reinforced by repeated disclaimers of neutrality. Anti-abortion decisions frequently preface their reasoning with assertions of impartiality, emphasizing that abortion presents “serious moral, ethical, and policy issues” while insisting that judicial resolution “does not rest on the justices’ morals [or personal] views” (Florida 2024 and Arizona 2024).Footnote
9 Such disclaimers are unusual in other areas of law. Their presence here signals an awareness that abortion adjudication is politically and morally charged. Indeed, the insistence on neutrality reveals the disagreement it seeks to contain.
Despite these disclaimers, moral reasoning does substantial work in decisions upholding abortion restrictions. Courts that invalidate abortion laws need only establish a constitutional violation; the moral meaning of abortion can remain implicit. Courts that uphold restrictions, however, must justify the state’s interest — an argument that always invokes fetal life. In this way, moral reasoning becomes embedded within doctrinal analysis. The result is a subtle but consequential divergence: anti-abortion opinions often try to persuade readers that abortion is morally troubling, while pro-access opinions focus on resolving a constitutional dispute. Through normative storytelling, courts produce a legal narrative in which explicit moral evaluation is concentrated in decisions restricting abortion access.
Evidentiary Storytelling: Abortion as Fact in Criminal Cases
The most common way abortion arises in state courts, however, is through criminal cases, where pregnancy or abortion is used to establish motive or harm. In these cases, abortion appears as a fact within the elements of the underlying crime rather than as a moral or political issue. If constitutional cases reveal how courts evaluate abortion, criminal cases reveal how courts treat abortion as evidence.
In this context, abortion is not debated or evaluated; it is recorded. Courts incorporate abortion into case narratives as an evidentiary detail, often without acknowledging its human or political significance. Abortion becomes an unremarkable component — part of the background structure through which crimes are interpreted. These patterns appear across multiple states and offense types, including homicide, sexual assault, and sentencing-enhancement cases.
This dynamic is particularly visible in cases where abortion is used to establish motive. In murder cases from California, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Connecticut, a defendant’s anger at a partner’s pregnancy or refusal to obtain an abortion is treated as evidence of premeditation.Footnote
10 The woman’s decision — whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy — enters the opinion to the degree that it explains the defendant’s actions. Her autonomy is not evaluated as a normative claim but absorbed into the logic of the crime itself. Abortion functions as a motive-producing fact, not a value deserving recognition or analysis.
A similar pattern emerges in cases involving sexual violence against minors. Courts in states such as Nebraska, Montana, Wisconsin, and Washington routinely document pregnancies and abortions with clinical precision, noting dates, gestational periods, and procedural details.Footnote
11 These descriptions provide the temporal and evidentiary anchors necessary for legal adjudication, but they also strip abortion of narrative depth. The experience of the minor — what she knew, how decisions were made, and what the abortion meant to her — is largely absent. Abuse is rendered as evidence; abortion as a data point.
There are rare exceptions. In one case from Texas, Cannon v. Wilson (2025)Footnote
12, the court departs from this flattened style, incorporating the victim’s emotional experience and describing repeated abuse, pregnancies, and abortions. Yet its rarity underscores the dominant pattern: evidentiary storytelling prioritizes legal sufficiency over the lived experiences of those involved.
The treatment of abortion in California’s “great bodily injury” cases further illustrates this logic.Footnote
13 Courts consider whether pregnancy resulting from sexual assault constitutes a qualifying injury and, in doing so, treat abortion as part of the chain of harm. Defendants’ arguments attempting to sever this sequence — by framing abortion as an independent act performed by a third party — are rejected. Instead, courts position pregnancy and abortion as consequences of violence, reinforcing their status as evidentiary components rather than sites of agency or care. Abortion is neither moralized nor defended; it is incorporated into legal reasoning as a fact that helps establish what happened.
Citation and the Circulation of Judicial Stories
The patterns identified above are not confined to individual opinions. They circulate across courts through citation practices that reproduce and stabilize particular ways of understanding abortion. State courts borrow not only doctrine but also ways of describing abortion from one another, reproducing familiar language across jurisdictions (Bowie and Savchak Reference Bowie and Savchak2022; Matthews Reference Matthews2024).
The borrowing is visible across post-Dobbs decisions. In a 2026 Wyoming case, the court canvasses Montana, Florida, Arizona, and North Dakota to define the scope of a constitutional right to health care decision making, situating its analysis within an interstate dialogue.Footnote
14 Similarly, the Iowa Supreme Court notes that “several of our sister states have declined to embrace Dobbs” and uses those approaches to guide its own review.Footnote
15 Other courts invoke alignment more directly: Nebraska emphasizes that its reasoning “aligns” with a recent Florida decision,Footnote
16 while South Carolina surveys how multiple states have resolved abortion questions to frame its own constitutional analysis.Footnote
17
Through these practices, courts do more than cite precedent. They adopt and reinforce specific ways of describing abortion — whether as a matter of bodily autonomy, medical care, or the protection of prenatal life. Because these descriptions have been accepted elsewhere, courts can present contested moral and political claims through language that appears settled and familiar. This reinforces the narrative boundaries within which abortion is understood, making some framings appear settled while others remain marginal.
Citation practices also allow courts to present their decisions as part of a broader judicial conversation. By referencing other jurisdictions, courts position their decisions as consistent with broader legal trends rather than isolated legal judgments. In post-Dobbs litigation, where constitutional meaning is unsettled, this practice provides both guidance and legitimacy. Through citation, courts not only decide cases; they participate in shaping the terms in which abortion is debated and governed.
Conclusion: The Stories Courts Tell
Courts do not simply decide abortion cases; they tell stories about abortion that shape how it is understood in law and public life. By selecting which facts to foreground, which language to adopt, and which harms to recognize, courts construct abortion as a particular kind of problem: sometimes a moral dilemma, sometimes a constitutional right, and often, in other domains of law, an unremarkable fact embedded in the background of a case.
Attending to judicial storytelling reveals a striking duality, but also a convergence in how abortion is ultimately constructed. In constitutional cases, abortion is made highly visible and morally charged, often framed through disputes over competing claims. In criminal cases, abortion is just as present but far less visible as a site of meaning. It appears as evidence — anchoring timelines, establishing motive, or marking injury — while the experience itself recedes from view. Across these forms of storytelling, abortion is more often presented as a matter of moral contestation or legal relevance than as an ordinary dimension of health care, family life, or routine autonomy. Courts construct abortion either as a morally contested act requiring justification or as an evidentiary fact largely detached from lived experience. The result is an account in which abortion appears either as exceptional or incidental, but seldom as part of everyday life. What differs is how abortion is told; what remains consistent is what is left out.
This is not to suggest that constitutional and criminal cases should be written in the same way. Different areas of law require different forms of reasoning and serve different institutional purposes. The point is that these distinct forms of reasoning nonetheless produce a remarkably similar outcome: abortion is rarely narrated as an ordinary aspect of health care or everyday life.
These patterns matter because judicial stories do not stay within individual opinions (Black et al. Reference Black, Owens, Wedeking and Wohlfarth2016; Hoekstra Reference Hoekstra2000). They circulate and accumulate — through legal citation, media, advocacy, and political discourse — helping to define what abortion is and what it is not. When courts frame abortion through contested moral claims, they narrow the range of circumstances that appear worthy of recognition. When they render abortion invisible within evidentiary narratives, they strip it of personal and political meaning. Together, these narrative practices shape which claims are intelligible, which harms are legible, and which forms of reproductive care are treated as credible within the law.
The stories we tell about abortion are, ultimately, stories about whose experiences matter, which decisions require justification, and what kinds of lives the law is prepared to see. Courts do not simply take sides in abortion disputes; they ask different things of each side. Some claims are morally defended, while others are presented primarily as matters of legal resolution. Taking those stories seriously does not require rejecting legal reasoning. It requires recognizing that law itself is one of the most powerful storytelling institutions in American politics.
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In the wake of the United States Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)Footnote 1, state courts have emerged as central sites for contesting and redefining abortion. Existing scholarship on abortion storytelling has focused largely on individuals, advocates, and legislators, emphasizing how personal narratives shape public opinion and policymaking. This essay shifts analytic attention to a less visible but highly consequential set of narrators: courts. It argues that judicial opinions do more than resolve legal disputes; they are institutional stories that construct abortion’s meaning.
Research on abortion politics demonstrates that the way abortion is described can affect how it is understood and evaluated. Hansen (Reference Hansen2025), for example, finds that support for reproductive policies varies with the language used to characterize them, including whether abortion medication is called “physician prescribed” or “chemical” and whether abortion involves an “embryo” or a “pre-born infant.” Other research finds that competing frames change the persuasiveness of abortion restrictions (Roberti, Morgan, and Krumbholz Reference Roberti, Morgan and Krumbholz2026) and that abortion politics became increasingly framed in terms of medical necessity, particularly in abortion-rights arguments (Skinner Reference Skinner2012). Courts are another site where these choices about language matter.
In judicial opinions, courts do more than apply doctrine to fact. In recounting events and explaining outcomes, courts construct abortion as a particular kind of act — shaping how it is understood and when it warrants legal recognition or restraint (Black et al. Reference Black, Owens, Wedeking and Wohlfarth2016; Goelzhauser and Cann Reference Goelzhauser and Cann2014). In doing so, courts participate in the political construction of abortion, influencing not only legal rules but how abortion is publicly understood.
Drawing on an analysis of post-Dobbs state appellate court cases,Footnote 2 this essay identifies two dominant forms of abortion storytelling that emerge in different areas of law but together define abortion’s legal and political meaning. In normative storytelling, most visible in constitutional and rights-based cases, courts evaluate abortion’s moral status, often framing it through competing claims about autonomy, fetal life, and medical care. In evidentiary storytelling, most common in criminal cases, abortion appears as a fact within the logic of criminal proof — used to establish motive, intent, or harm — without sustained attention to lived experience or moral dimensions. These forms differ but work in tandem to channel how abortion is understood within the law.
Centering judicial storytelling advances three contributions. It conceptualizes courts as narrators, shows how narratives shape abortion’s meaning, and demonstrates that constitutional and criminal law tell different kinds of stories that converge to limit how abortion is publicly and legally understood. Examining how courts narrate abortion clarifies how judicial decisions reinforce particular understandings of gender, sexuality, and state responsibility, even as formal doctrine remains in flux. More broadly, this essay invites scholars to treat judicial narratives as a mechanism through which abortion is politically constructed, governed, and contested in the post-Dobbs era.
Normative Storytelling: Moralizing Abortion in Constitutional Cases
In constitutional and rights-based cases, courts engage in normative storytelling: narrative practices that evaluate abortion’s moral status while resolving legal disputes (Budziak, Hitt, and Lempert Reference Budziak, Hitt and Lempert2019; Budziak and Lempert Reference Budziak and Lempert2023; Haire, Moyer, and Treier Reference Haire, Moyer and Treier2013). Political scientists have long recognized that judges are not neutral arbiters; rather, their decisions reflect policy preferences. Yet these preferences are often obscured by the language of judicial opinions, which shape how the law is understood and applied over time (Ewick and Silbey Reference Ewick and Silbey1998; Matthews Reference Matthews2022). Judicial decisions are not simply applications of doctrine; they also express the values the law protects and the harms it recognizes (Maltby and Matthews Reference Maltby and Matthews2025). These commitments emerge through the way courts describe facts, harms, and legal claims.
The language of judicial opinions is thus contested terrain. Courts construct abortion differently depending on the outcome they reach, producing an asymmetrical pattern of moralization. Courts protecting abortion access describe abortion through clinical (Skinner Reference Skinner2012) and constitutional language, for example referring to “abortion care” (North Dakota), “qualified medical professionals” and “medical procedures” (Wyoming), and decisions based on “medically and objectively observable evidence” (South Carolina).Footnote 3 These opinions also invoke constitutional concepts such as “privacy” and “personal autonomy” (North Dakota and Montana) and “self-determination” (Kansas).Footnote 4 When moral language does appear in pro-rights decisions — as in a Wisconsin concurrence emphasizing women’s experiences (Kaul v. Urmanski 2025)Footnote 5 — it stands out precisely because it departs from the dominant narrative style.
By contrast, anti-abortion decisions invoke explicitly moral language, framing abortion in terms of “the life of the unborn” (South Carolina), “protecting prenatal life” (Indiana), or a “right to kill unborn children” (North Dakota).Footnote 6 One Wisconsin decision emphasizes that a fetus did not consent to an abortion, while courts in Texas refer to medical providers as “abortionists.”Footnote 7 Other opinions characterize abortion as “elective” (Arizona, Missouri, and Texas) or “on demand” (Indiana and North Dakota).Footnote 8 These choices do more than describe legal positions; they signal which interests are treated as morally important and whose claims are legitimate. Courts thus adopt and amplify specific moral vocabularies within judicial opinions.
This asymmetry is reinforced by repeated disclaimers of neutrality. Anti-abortion decisions frequently preface their reasoning with assertions of impartiality, emphasizing that abortion presents “serious moral, ethical, and policy issues” while insisting that judicial resolution “does not rest on the justices’ morals [or personal] views” (Florida 2024 and Arizona 2024).Footnote 9 Such disclaimers are unusual in other areas of law. Their presence here signals an awareness that abortion adjudication is politically and morally charged. Indeed, the insistence on neutrality reveals the disagreement it seeks to contain.
Despite these disclaimers, moral reasoning does substantial work in decisions upholding abortion restrictions. Courts that invalidate abortion laws need only establish a constitutional violation; the moral meaning of abortion can remain implicit. Courts that uphold restrictions, however, must justify the state’s interest — an argument that always invokes fetal life. In this way, moral reasoning becomes embedded within doctrinal analysis. The result is a subtle but consequential divergence: anti-abortion opinions often try to persuade readers that abortion is morally troubling, while pro-access opinions focus on resolving a constitutional dispute. Through normative storytelling, courts produce a legal narrative in which explicit moral evaluation is concentrated in decisions restricting abortion access.
Evidentiary Storytelling: Abortion as Fact in Criminal Cases
The most common way abortion arises in state courts, however, is through criminal cases, where pregnancy or abortion is used to establish motive or harm. In these cases, abortion appears as a fact within the elements of the underlying crime rather than as a moral or political issue. If constitutional cases reveal how courts evaluate abortion, criminal cases reveal how courts treat abortion as evidence.
In this context, abortion is not debated or evaluated; it is recorded. Courts incorporate abortion into case narratives as an evidentiary detail, often without acknowledging its human or political significance. Abortion becomes an unremarkable component — part of the background structure through which crimes are interpreted. These patterns appear across multiple states and offense types, including homicide, sexual assault, and sentencing-enhancement cases.
This dynamic is particularly visible in cases where abortion is used to establish motive. In murder cases from California, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Connecticut, a defendant’s anger at a partner’s pregnancy or refusal to obtain an abortion is treated as evidence of premeditation.Footnote 10 The woman’s decision — whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy — enters the opinion to the degree that it explains the defendant’s actions. Her autonomy is not evaluated as a normative claim but absorbed into the logic of the crime itself. Abortion functions as a motive-producing fact, not a value deserving recognition or analysis.
A similar pattern emerges in cases involving sexual violence against minors. Courts in states such as Nebraska, Montana, Wisconsin, and Washington routinely document pregnancies and abortions with clinical precision, noting dates, gestational periods, and procedural details.Footnote 11 These descriptions provide the temporal and evidentiary anchors necessary for legal adjudication, but they also strip abortion of narrative depth. The experience of the minor — what she knew, how decisions were made, and what the abortion meant to her — is largely absent. Abuse is rendered as evidence; abortion as a data point.
There are rare exceptions. In one case from Texas, Cannon v. Wilson (2025)Footnote 12, the court departs from this flattened style, incorporating the victim’s emotional experience and describing repeated abuse, pregnancies, and abortions. Yet its rarity underscores the dominant pattern: evidentiary storytelling prioritizes legal sufficiency over the lived experiences of those involved.
The treatment of abortion in California’s “great bodily injury” cases further illustrates this logic.Footnote 13 Courts consider whether pregnancy resulting from sexual assault constitutes a qualifying injury and, in doing so, treat abortion as part of the chain of harm. Defendants’ arguments attempting to sever this sequence — by framing abortion as an independent act performed by a third party — are rejected. Instead, courts position pregnancy and abortion as consequences of violence, reinforcing their status as evidentiary components rather than sites of agency or care. Abortion is neither moralized nor defended; it is incorporated into legal reasoning as a fact that helps establish what happened.
Citation and the Circulation of Judicial Stories
The patterns identified above are not confined to individual opinions. They circulate across courts through citation practices that reproduce and stabilize particular ways of understanding abortion. State courts borrow not only doctrine but also ways of describing abortion from one another, reproducing familiar language across jurisdictions (Bowie and Savchak Reference Bowie and Savchak2022; Matthews Reference Matthews2024).
The borrowing is visible across post-Dobbs decisions. In a 2026 Wyoming case, the court canvasses Montana, Florida, Arizona, and North Dakota to define the scope of a constitutional right to health care decision making, situating its analysis within an interstate dialogue.Footnote 14 Similarly, the Iowa Supreme Court notes that “several of our sister states have declined to embrace Dobbs” and uses those approaches to guide its own review.Footnote 15 Other courts invoke alignment more directly: Nebraska emphasizes that its reasoning “aligns” with a recent Florida decision,Footnote 16 while South Carolina surveys how multiple states have resolved abortion questions to frame its own constitutional analysis.Footnote 17
Through these practices, courts do more than cite precedent. They adopt and reinforce specific ways of describing abortion — whether as a matter of bodily autonomy, medical care, or the protection of prenatal life. Because these descriptions have been accepted elsewhere, courts can present contested moral and political claims through language that appears settled and familiar. This reinforces the narrative boundaries within which abortion is understood, making some framings appear settled while others remain marginal.
Citation practices also allow courts to present their decisions as part of a broader judicial conversation. By referencing other jurisdictions, courts position their decisions as consistent with broader legal trends rather than isolated legal judgments. In post-Dobbs litigation, where constitutional meaning is unsettled, this practice provides both guidance and legitimacy. Through citation, courts not only decide cases; they participate in shaping the terms in which abortion is debated and governed.
Conclusion: The Stories Courts Tell
Courts do not simply decide abortion cases; they tell stories about abortion that shape how it is understood in law and public life. By selecting which facts to foreground, which language to adopt, and which harms to recognize, courts construct abortion as a particular kind of problem: sometimes a moral dilemma, sometimes a constitutional right, and often, in other domains of law, an unremarkable fact embedded in the background of a case.
Attending to judicial storytelling reveals a striking duality, but also a convergence in how abortion is ultimately constructed. In constitutional cases, abortion is made highly visible and morally charged, often framed through disputes over competing claims. In criminal cases, abortion is just as present but far less visible as a site of meaning. It appears as evidence — anchoring timelines, establishing motive, or marking injury — while the experience itself recedes from view. Across these forms of storytelling, abortion is more often presented as a matter of moral contestation or legal relevance than as an ordinary dimension of health care, family life, or routine autonomy. Courts construct abortion either as a morally contested act requiring justification or as an evidentiary fact largely detached from lived experience. The result is an account in which abortion appears either as exceptional or incidental, but seldom as part of everyday life. What differs is how abortion is told; what remains consistent is what is left out.
This is not to suggest that constitutional and criminal cases should be written in the same way. Different areas of law require different forms of reasoning and serve different institutional purposes. The point is that these distinct forms of reasoning nonetheless produce a remarkably similar outcome: abortion is rarely narrated as an ordinary aspect of health care or everyday life.
These patterns matter because judicial stories do not stay within individual opinions (Black et al. Reference Black, Owens, Wedeking and Wohlfarth2016; Hoekstra Reference Hoekstra2000). They circulate and accumulate — through legal citation, media, advocacy, and political discourse — helping to define what abortion is and what it is not. When courts frame abortion through contested moral claims, they narrow the range of circumstances that appear worthy of recognition. When they render abortion invisible within evidentiary narratives, they strip it of personal and political meaning. Together, these narrative practices shape which claims are intelligible, which harms are legible, and which forms of reproductive care are treated as credible within the law.
The stories we tell about abortion are, ultimately, stories about whose experiences matter, which decisions require justification, and what kinds of lives the law is prepared to see. Courts do not simply take sides in abortion disputes; they ask different things of each side. Some claims are morally defended, while others are presented primarily as matters of legal resolution. Taking those stories seriously does not require rejecting legal reasoning. It requires recognizing that law itself is one of the most powerful storytelling institutions in American politics.
Competing interests
The author declares none.