behind fetal pain, it was really purely the legal line which adf felt could be the right entry point to strike at roe and have the best shot of having the decision overturned, so it is paula g policy s legal strategy. the mississippi state solicitor general was the one who is really wanting to go for broke on this one. our book has interesting details inside the room and these decisions were made in real time, it is such a window into legal strategy that so many people don t get to see, but you know, they knew the broader changes that were happening certainly with former president trump getting these justices, so the question really was, which case will the supreme court take? when will they do that and so people would tell us you know, the right, they never want to
the final decade of the roe era from little state legislators all the way up to the supreme court. what is interesting is the way in which the adf, as aggressive and ambitious as it was, did not think the dobbs decision was going to be the final nail in the coffin for reproductive choice. can you talk about the negotiations that were happening behind the scenes? sure, the right is a movement that things in generations and they always have a plan for the plan for the plan just to make sure that no matter what contingency happened, they were going to do whatever it took to overturn roe, and that is something the left really missed along the way. you have the sort of deluge of laws coming through the state legislatures as ended up happening with the dobbs case. they ended up being behind getting that legislation passed through their allies with conservative christian lobbyist in states like mississippi but the trick for them really was building strategies on
what s interesting, elizabeth, the way the adf as aggressive and ambitious as it was didn t think the dobbs decision was going to be the final nail in the coffin for reproductive choice. can you talk a little bit about the negotiations happening behind the scenes? sure. the right is a moment that thinks in generations, and they always had a plan for the plan for the plan, right? just to make sure that no matter what contingency happened, they were going to do whatever it took to overturn roe. and that s something that the left really missed along the way. you have this sort of deluge of laws coming through the state legislature and adf ended up happening with the dobbs case ended up being behind getting that legislation passed through their allies with conservative christian lobbyists in states like mississippi. but the trick for them really was building strategies on strategies and making sure that no opportunity could go unmissed, and that kind of big
dias, national religion correspondent for the times, and lisa lair. it is a tour de force. you guys both talk the sides of this. first the adf, for people not familiar with the organization can you tell us what it is? this a legal advocacy organization with an expressly christian mission who have really focused on cases that blur the line between religion and politics in the public square. they were very involved in blocking of course the contraceptive mandate under obamacare. and they were the ones who really saw and developed a major part of the strategy to overturn roe. and what our book tracks and really creates for the first time, the first narrative of how they did it and how they worked that case over what we re calling the final decade, a ten-year period, the final decade of the roe era from little state legislators all the way up to the supreme court.
question will it spark legal strategy to ask for the full overturn as the first argument, or should it be, court, we want you to uphold the mississippi 15-week law itself and ask for overturning roe as the second. and it was the mississippi attorney general s office that decided, no, we re going to go for the whole thing, which shows the radicalization of this movement over this time period. this is not the same religious right, the same anti-abortion movement of 30 years ago. well, the southern evangelicals at the dawn of the roe decision weren t even sure they were against the decision initially, right? no, they supported it. lisa, adf is not done with roe. the abortion fight goes on and the christian conservative cultural war continues. can you talk a little bit about their other priorities as we move forward in time? part of what we found was internal strategy laying out