Professor Sabine Lang addressed this question in a guest lecture on 24 June 2026, hosted by the Gender Studies Research Group at the Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin, which is supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

 Sabine Lang is a professor of European and International Studies at the University of Washington and is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin. Her lecture, titled “Legal vs. Public Mobilization: U.S. Civil Society and the End of Roe v. Wade,” was organized at the invitation of Professor Kathrin Zippel, PhD. Together with Dr. Daniel Schumann and Dr. Matthias Schneider, Professor Zippel welcomed Professor Lang to the Gender Studies Research Group. 

Drawing on four types of data, including organizational websites, coverage in leading media outlets, social media posts, and tax records, Professor Lang examined why the pro-choice movement made so little use of the “window of opportunity” created by the seven-week period between the leak and the final decision.

 Her analysis highlighted several structural factors. In the United States, the pro-choice movement is highly decentralized, comprising numerous local organizations with diverse agendas and limited coordination at the national level. It is also significantly underfunded compared with the anti-abortion movement. Moreover, it has increasingly focused its efforts on legal action through the courts, legislation, and litigation, rather than activities to mobilize the public.

 The anti-abortion movement, by contrast, combines legal with public mobilization. It is interconnected horizontally and vertically, highly coordinated, and well-funded. Remarkably, it has also successfully adapted strategies first developed by the pro-choice movement. Modelled in part on Planned Parenthood, it has created a network of conservative, faith-based crisis pregnancy centers, many of which receive public funding. The movement has also proved more effective online, particularly on Instagram and X, where it appropriated the visual language of pro-choice activism.

 After the Dobbs decision returned the authority over abortion legislation to individual states, the pro-choice movement achieved important victories in several referendums and strengthened protections for reproductive autonomy in a number of states. Yet these successes did not translate into broader political mobilization: many voters supported reproductive rights while simultaneously voting against Kamala Harris.

 Professor Lang concluded that a feminist movement can win individual legal battles and still lose the broader public debate because of insufficient mobilization. Legal and public resistance should not be treated as alternatives. A movement that focuses exclusively on legal victories risks losing control over the broader narrative.

 The lecture was followed by a lively discussion involving members of the Gender Studies Research Group, students, early-career researchers, and international gender studies scholars, including Professor Angelika von Wahl (Lafayette College), Professor Gabriele Wilde (University of Münster), Professor Teresa Kulawik (Södertörn University), Professor Joyce Mushaben (Georgetown University), and Nikolina Klatt (doctoral researcher, Freie Universität Berlin).