Gilead Never Came: Why The Handmaid’s Tale Panic Over Dobbs Was Election Year Hysteria

Nothing ever happens. It was just a GOTV op.

Another topic better for print than a podcast, Matt McInnis

It was May of 2022 when it leaked. The Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade. The uproar was immediate. The Handmaid’s Tale larping began in earnest. Who leaked it? Why did they leak it? What would the decision mean? How would this affect midterms? Did they want to leak it to pressure justices into changing their minds and not overturning the famous ‘70s decision? America learned soon thereafter. In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning nearly fifty years of federal protection for abortion. Many predicted a sharp decline in abortions, clinic deserts across the South and Midwest, and a return to the back alleys for women seeking to end pregnancies. Some bans came swiftly; trigger laws in red states snapped into place like traps long set and waiting. Looking at the landscape three and a half years later, the story is far more complicated, and far more strange, than anyone anticipated.

This is not the tale of victory or defeat that partisans on either side might prefer. It is the story of adaptation and federalism. It reveals how technology, geography, politics, and sheer determination reshaped a landscape that looked, at first glance, irreparably shattered. Like Americans rerouted supply chains during pandemics, people found ways around new barriers. Americans revealed how maybe they were not so gung-ho about the beliefs they shouted every four years. In doing so, they revealed something profound about how systems bend under pressure. Nothing ever happens.

“This is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ writ large,” Hillary Clinton, 2022

Consider the numbers first, because they defy the simplest narratives. Before Dobbs, the United States saw roughly 950,000 clinician-provided abortions annually. In the immediate aftermath, volumes dipped in banned states, plummeting to near zero in places like Texas and Alabama. Oddly enough, when viewed nationally, something unexpected happened. According to the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount project, which tracks monthly provider data with remarkable granularity, the monthly average rose from around 80,000 in the partial year of 2022 (post-Dobbs) to 88,000 in 2023, 95,000 in 2024, and approaching 99,000 in the first half of 2025. Full-year estimates for 2024 reached 1.14 million, a clear increase over pre-Dobbs baselines. This failure to change the status quo had to have crushed pro-life advocates. How could abortions rise when half the country had slammed the door shut? The answer lies in a quiet technological revolution: telehealth and medication abortion.

Medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol) had already been climbing before Dobbs, accounting for 53% of procedures in 2020. Media campaigns for awareness to keep the choice alive worked. By 2023, it was 63%, and by late 2024, telehealth alone made up 25% of all abortions, rising to 27% in early 2025. Telehealth took off with covid, and it’s not just HIMS and HERS sending Millennials overpriced SSRIs and Viagra. A pill to end a pregnancy is just a pill, therefore eligible, and Americans love their pills. Pills were banned in restrictive states, so there needed to be a technological solution. Telehealth helped, but it needed political assistance. The real game-changer was “shield laws.” States like California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Washington passed legislation protecting clinicians who prescribe abortion pills via telehealth to patients in restrictive states. These laws shield providers from extradition, subpoenas, and prosecution. By mid-2025, nearly 15,000 abortions per month were provided under these protections, many to residents of total-ban states. America in practice has created sanctuary states with long arms.

This is not back-alley medicine. There was no need to return to black market abortion doctors of ill repute like it was 1925. Hop online and solve your problems. This is a network of licensed physicians mailing FDA-approved drugs to patients they consult virtually. The pills arrive discreetly, often in plain packaging. For a woman in rural Mississippi or Texas, the alternative might be a 200-mile drive, childcare arrangements, time off work, and hotel stays. Telehealth collapses that distance and minimizes effort. As one #WeCount report notes, shield-law provision surged 61% year-over-year by mid-2025.

But adaptation has costs. Travel still dominates for many. In 2024, approximately 155,000 people crossed state lines, down slightly from 169,000 in 2023 as telehealth grew, but still double the pre-Dobbs figure of around 81,000. This is reminiscent of Irish girls taking the ferry to England for abortions for decades. Clinics in Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico became overwhelmed. The left loves their nonprofits and holds abortion a sacred right, so they worked money around to deal with 21st century federalism. Carbondale, Illinois, which is a small town in the southern tip of the state, now hosts multiple facilities serving patients from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee. Wait times stretch weeks.

“Gilead is coming, y’all…,” Joy Reid

Clinics closed rapidly after Dobbs with the news noting each change. Within 100 days, 66 facilities in 15 states stopped providing abortions. Entire states, and it is worth it to list them (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin) lost all providers at different points. By late 2025, over a dozen states maintained near-total bans, with early limits (6-12 weeks) in others like Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina.

There was always going to be a patchwork. The point of overturning Roe v. Wade was to return the decision back to the states. One could easily guess how states would fall, and when one looked at surveys through the years, it would be easy to see how different regions would be very permissive while others would be restrictive and some would fall in between. The sort did not always go as expected. True surprises emerged. Kansas, a deeply red state, rejected a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in 2022. Michigan and Ohio enshrined protections via ballot measures with Ohio doing so the same year it re-elected a Republican governor by over 10%. In 2024, voters in seven states (Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York) approved amendments restoring or expanding rights, while measures failed in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Consider that first list of seven states. There are blue, red and purple states all represented. Direct democracy proved a powerful counterweight to legislatures. Gilead never quite materialized.

Emergency contraception tells a parallel story of anticipation and anxiety. Sales of Plan B surged immediately after the Dobbs leak and decision. It was similar to gun sale spikes when Democrats win the presidency. Retailers reported spikes of hundreds to thousands percent, with purchase limits to prevent shortages. Brands ramped up advertising, clarifying that morning-after pills prevent pregnancy, not end it. This issue always liberally uses euphemisms. You now see those ads on YouTube and during football game telecasts. Post-election fears in 2024 drove another wave, with online providers reporting 1,000% increases in orders as women stockpiled.

Did the dead moms needing abortions but denied stories ever pile up? No. If one happened, you would know her name. She would be the face of the reproductive rights lobby. There is no need. Most states put in 6 or 12 week windows, and roughly 45% of abortion happen in the first 6 weeks of pregnancy. Even if denied, she can just slip online and have a friendly doctor in California prescribed what she needs. It’s not 1925.

This is the paradox of Dobbs in the eyes of these hysterical doom pushers. There is no change. Dobbs was a decision meant to devolve power to states, and it created a patchwork where voters in blue and red states set up the laws to reflect their values. Telehealth and shield laws represent a digital underground railroad of sorts, and it is legal, regulated, and safe. Interstate travel funds, abortion funds, and networks of practical support sprang up, helping thousands navigate the maze. Corporations sprang into action by openly announcing how they would provide time off and support for employees needing health care.

“They’re not going to be satisfied until the whole country is Gilead,” Sen. Liz Warren, 2021

We now know this did not change aggregate numbers. Abortion is still legal in many states. Telehealth and medical advancements make it de facto legal with a little legwork for anyone. Legal experts in spring of 2022 even noted that this was always going to be the outcome. States would make decisions, and we may never see a big change. They were right. So why the huge panic and hysteria? Why the Offred larping?

Because it was an election year. The Democrats run a successful get out the vote system where they agitate and then activate. In 2012, Obama used Trayvon Martin to agitate and activate in November. In 2018, the Parkland school shooting became a gun control push that was going nowhere. There were rallies with televised speeches. There was a huge march. Nothing happened in Congress, but the voter registrations and voter rolls were activated in 2018. The same happened here.

In 2022, the Democrats faced a problem of high inflation, Biden’s sketchy legitimacy situation and a vaccine fight that centered on rights. Dobbs provided them a huge agitation opportunity. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America joined together for a $150 million voter registration and education program. These are nonpartisan organizations for tax filing purposes, but anyone knows what they were made for in election years. The media agitation provided them a hook for voter outreach and registration. Once these organizations had the individual in their databases, these same voter lists were sold to the Democrats to microtarget and nudge for November’s election.

It worked. Inflation did not affect voting, but abortion concerns did. The 2022 Red Wave never came. Polling surveys showed a 1-3% lead for generic GOP in congressional polling results. That was winter 2022. Dobbs flipped that immediately. The Democrats took a small lead in the summer, and right before the election, Republicans had a small lead of 1-2%. Credit goes to the nonpartisan work in the spring and summer. They can stay within the rules by educating and registering candidates with scripted calls, as long as they never explicitly endorse a candidate. It may not have shown up in polling, but the voter motivation levels were different. In razor thin margin races, it made all of the difference.

The fear was this would doom the GOP as abortion became a state by state battle. Pro-choice groups outspend their opponents 6-1 in ballot referendums. If Kansas cannot pass a ban, purple states are not. Behind the scenes even in red state legislatures like Indiana, state reps and senators had cold feet about passing new restrictions that they had promised their base for decades. How committed were GOP voters to this? Senator Hawley is advocating for Missouri’s future vote on such a ban and even noted, “there’s not one organization nationwide that’s dedicated specifically to helping to both pass these pro-life measures that are on the ballot, but to also defeat the pro-abortion ones,” in reference to Missouri’s upcoming vote. When even the big national organizations are sitting out the state by state fights, one has to question if it was just a grift? There was minimal fight in ’24, and states split their ballots by protecting abortion but electing Trump. Always called a divisive leader, Trump somehow deftly navigated and defused the abortion issue.

The deeper story though is if we knew this would go to states with many Americans still eligible to get abortions, why did it generate such hysteria and outrage? It comes down to tolerance vs. acceptance. Roe v. Wade was set on an invented right to privacy. That was tossed with Dobbs. Roe v. Wade was about the nation coming to grips with medical advancements that did make surgical abortion much safer for women and easier to perform. Roe really was an acceptance of a dark act. That decision in the 1970s was the ultimate permission slip handed down by nine black robed justices. What was considered a crime and something shameful was suddenly legal… and could be framed better.

It did not take long for media messaging to jump in and frame the issue in positive, progressive ways. Hollywood got into it with The Godfather II famously inserting an abortion revelation literally one year after the decision. Movies always framed it as a serious choice by desperate women, and even as late as 1999, Hollywood churned out The Cider House Rules as the feel good abortion movie of the year. This was the framing for Americans to view the issue in all media formats.

Then social media came, and that illusion crumbled. There are plenty of sad stories that pro-choice advocates can share (and some readers may personally know), but Americans started to see a large number of creepy or horrifying abortion stories. It was not the Kermit Gosnell case or the selling baby parts expose, which showed abortion’s grotesque reality. It was TikTok after TikTok, Reel after Reel of everyday women shouting their story. Americans thought they were tolerating the story of sad, desperate women, but they were accepting the disturbing stories of the many joyful social media members. This joy is reflected in the female crowds in international capitols every time a nation passes legalization laws.

Dobbs sparked so much anger because it was the system saying no. That enraged a segment of the female voter population, and the left was ready to stoke that agitation and turn it into votes. Think of the images of elderly women dressed in Handmaid’s Tale costumes. Elderly women! Nothing was changing legally. It was crystal clear states would decide. We now have the results to show that tech and nonprofits have routed around bans. Dobbs was almost an administrative move. States, you decide. While it was sending the decision back down to the states, it was removing the protection and permission from the highest law in the land. Supreme Court justices wear black robes as part of the ritual as they are now our high priests. While Dobbs did not make it illegal, it no longer allowed for abortion advocates to gloat and wave the permission slip around for all to see. Roe v. Wade is likely the only Supreme Court Decision an American can name. It was a decades long sore counter to pro-choice supporters… just because it is legal does not make it right.

Now, they don’t even have that. For fifty years, women had the ultimate veto. Technology advanced to make that veto even easier. They still do. It came with a legal stamp of approval. It’s gone. The numbers do not lie, so we know there has been no change in activity. Something did change though. It is a little more underground. Maybe the rationalizations you used in 1982 do not sit so well now. It is a little less clear who has the moral high ground. Not for the pro-life side as protecting innocent life is as clear as it gets. It’s less clear for those who needed that outside authority, who needed a permission slip and who needed a conscience cleanser.