Moral Politics Theory Applied to Abortion: Utopias, Dystopias, and Dobbs

Authors

Susan Ayres, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Journal Title

Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review

ISSN

2160-9993

Abstract

This article examines Moral Politics Theory (MPT) as a way to understand current tensions in the US concerning reproductive justice. MPT, as developed and researched for over thirty years by cognitive scientist, George Lakoff, provides a way to explain differences in political worldviews. According to Lakoff’s research in Moral Politics and Don’t Think of an Elephant!, conservatives tend to hold a strict-father model, and progressives hold a nurturant-parent model. People in the political middle tend to endorse both models; Lakoff labels those in the middle as “biconceptuals,” and discusses how this group is most susceptible to persuasion because metaphors frame the way we think. This article illustrates these different strict-father and nurturant-parent models through a discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In the utopian Omelas, the peoples’ happiness is based on a dark secret which ensures “their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies.” Some citizens cannot abide by this ethical dilemma and leave Omelas. After analyzing this short story through MPT, this article turns to an analysis of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. The article examines how MPT can inform the ways that divergent views of human behavior shape legal theory, and also how progressive and conservative agendas are shaped by metaphors, which are crucial in framing social issues.

First Page

211

Last Page

294

Num Pages

84

Publisher

University of Alabama School of Law

Recommended Citation

Susan Ayres, Moral Politics Theory Applied to Abortion: Utopias, Dystopias, and Dobbs, Ala. C.R. & C.L. L. Rev. 211 (2025).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/2312

File Type

PDF