In the late 1990s, then–conservative hero Bill Kristol offered the Republican Party a warning: If the GOP couldn’t figure out how to “overturn Roe and move toward a post-abortion America, then in truth, there will be no conservative future.” Last Friday, the Supreme Court’s far-right majority heeded Kristol’s warning when it overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. Their conservative future has arrived.
The path to this moment has unfolded in plain sight. The justices who responded to Kristol’s pivotal call were appointed by Republican presidents and trained by the Federalist Society, the conservative legal movement’s most successful institution. They are hard-boiled conservative foot soldiers, not the compromise-seeking and incrementalist conservative justices of the past. When Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey last Friday—with only partial support from Chief Justice John Roberts—they achieved the goal of a decadeslong conservative project.
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