Power to the people? How Dobbs failed to deliver on democratic representation

The Dobbs decision claimed to enhance democratic representation by returning abortion policy-making to the states and the people. Using data from the 2024 Cooperative Election Study (CES), we examine the relationship between public preferences for gestational limits on abortion and actual state policies. State opinion consistently converges around a 12 to 20-week cutoff, yet actual policies are much more extreme, ranging from total bans to viability thresholds or even no regulations. Abortion policy is generally not congruent with state opinion and has become even less reflective of public opinion post-Dobbs. In fact, by November 2024, seventeen states changed their policies to be farther from their public's preferences following the decision, while only ten states moved policy closer to their public's position. Our study quantifies the disconnect between state abortion policies and public preferences, raising questions about democratic representation and demonstrating that Dobbs has failed to make abortion policy more representative.