Loading...
Federalism and representation:Evidence from state abortion laws in the aftermath of Dobbs vs. Jackson women’s health organization
Simonovits, Gabor Doherty, David Bor, Alexander
Simonovits, Gabor
Doherty, David
Bor, Alexander
Title / Series / Name
PNAS Nexus
Publication Volume
4
Publication Issue
5
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Supreme Court
abortion
decentralization
representation
Multidisciplinary
abortion
decentralization
representation
Multidisciplinary
Files
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27776
Abstract
Supporters of devolution argue that local policies better reflect citizen preferences than “one size fits all” policies enacted at the federal level. To test this claim, we leverage the sudden devolution of abortion policy-making that resulted from the Dobbs decision. Using multilevel regression with poststratification, we estimate the latest gestational age at which the average resident of each state believes abortion should be permitted and compare these estimates to state policies before and after the Dobbs ruling. We demonstrate that policies prior to Dobbs were more liberal than the average constituent’s preference in every state. In the wake of Dobbs, although this nationwide liberal bias evaporated, absolute distance between public preferences and policy was essentially unchanged. Instead of bringing policies closer to preferences, devolution allowed more liberal states to maintain policies that were “too liberal” for their average resident and opened the door for conservative states to leapfrog the preferences of their constituents.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2025-05
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf125