The Dobbs Effect on West Virginia

Abstract

Humans have practiced birth control, including abortion, for thousands of years. Pregnant individuals have sought abortions for many reasons even though the abortion procedure itself has often been dangerous to the pregnant person’s life. Moreover, a stable consensus concerning the debate about when life begins and other questions surrounding abortion has rarely if ever been attained. Notwithstanding the numerous questions raised by this indisputably controversial subject, this article is quite limited in scope. In Section I, we review the development and retrenchment of an individual’s right to terminate their pregnancy starting on January 22, 1973, the day that the United States Supreme Court held in Roe v. Wade that women have a legal right to terminate their pregnancies—a right that individual states could not override in some circumstances. In Section II, we trace the  development and retrenchment of that right in West Virginia. We conclude by observing that the post-Dobbs world is fraught with political subterfuge, making legislative consensus difficult even where there is actual agreement.

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K38