Here’s the Surprising Backstory of the Downfall of Roe v Wade

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), flanked by his wife Erin and family, is sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence during the swearing-in re-enactments for recently elected senators in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 3, 2019. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images

Erin Hawley didn’t know that she would help make history when she took a job in February with the conservative legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom. Two months later, the former law professor was on a plane to Mississippi to serve as co-counsel with the state’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, and its solicitor general, Scott Stewart, to win the most momentous Supreme Court case in half a century–the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“I think it was really meaningful for me because I had a 6-month-old that I actually took to Mississippi to that meeting,” Hawley said of her efforts to end the constitutional right to abortion. “It made why Dobbs matters really concrete, to be talking about this legal strategy and these issues with a baby in tow.”