Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
It has been a year since the Supreme Court stripped women of their nearly 50 year right to make their own reproductive health-care decisions in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS’ Dobbs v. Jackson decision has created a ripple effect, catching many people by surprise:
1) For the first time ever, a majority of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable and recent abortion laws are too strict.
2) For the first time in two decades, more people identify as pro-choice than pro-life.
3) For the first time in 49 years, “The Dobbs decision transferred all-or-nothing disputes to the states” (Wall Street Journal), an undue burden on state supreme courts.
4) A recent NBC News poll found voters who oppose the court’s actions include 55 percent of men, 67 percent of women, 66 percent of suburban women, 77 percent of female voters ages 18-49, 92 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 31 percent of Republicans.
5) A March17 - May 18 Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 569 OBGYN doctors revealed shocking findings: “68 percent found the [Dobbs] ruling has worsened their ability to manage pregnancy-related emergencies, [and] has worsened pregnancy-related mortality (64 percent), racial and ethnic inequities in maternal health (70 percent) and the ability to attract new OBGYNs to the field (55 percent).”
6) Michele Goodwin, a legal expert in bioethics and health law, notes “A dramatic proliferation in anti-abortion legislation in the United States has coincided with this nation becoming the deadliest in the `developed world’ to be pregnant and attempt to give birth” (Ms., May 24, 2022).
7) Black women are 3.5 times more likely to die due to maternal mortality than their white counterparts, unabated by abortion bans.
8) The states with the highest maternal mortality rates also lead the nation in anti-abortion legislation.
9) Isabella Oishi, Georgetown Law student, writes that since the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8) became law, it did not reduce the need for abortion care. Rather, there has been an 11-fold increase in Texans crossing state lines for abortions.
10) Oishi further reveals that states prohibiting women to seek abortions in other states is “likely unconstitutional based on the right to travel, the Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Dormant Commerce Clause. The anti abortion legislation harkens back to the (1793) Fugitive Slave Act.”
11) Federal judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, announced a constitutional right to abortion may be found in the 13th Amendment, ratified at the end of the Civil War in 1865 -- made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal. This is an area that was ignored by the Supreme Court (National Review).
12) Andrew Koppelman, author of “Forced Labor: A Thirteenth Amendment Defense of Abortion,” writes “forced pregnancy’s violation of personal liberty is obvious. Restrictions on abortion also violate the [13th] amendment’s guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group that, by virtue of a status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves” (National Review).
13) Elie Mystal, a legal scholar, wrote in the March 2022 issue of The Nation: “these [anti-abortion] states are borrowing traces of the sadistic logic and psychological tactics of this country’s enslavers.” As recently as June 29, Ja’han Jones, a research-based author, concurred with Mystal by noting “with abortion rights being rescinded across the country, it’s more important than ever that we call restrictions on this vital procedure what they actually are: slavery.”
The issues of pro-choice vs. pro-life, awareness of the 13th Amendment’s slavery and involuntary servitude prohibition, OBGYN doctor concerns, morality and maternal mortality have come center stage to voters and the 2024 election. GOP candidates will – most likely -- purposely ignore these multitude of findings while Democrats will tout women’s reproductive rights.
SCOTUS’s 6-3 decision created this unnecessary chaos for 334 million Americans.
Disclosures:
Steve is a non-paid freelance opinion editor and guest columnist contributor (circa 2013) to 172 newspapers in 32 states who receives no remuneration, funding or endorsement from any for-profit business, not-for-profit organization, political action committee or political party
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.