Amid the wave of excitement among conservative organizers over the prospect of reversing access to abortion for the first time in nearly 50 years -- since Roe v. Wade affirmed a constitutional right to the procedure in 1973 -- there are growing fears about how the conservative legal movement will fare if its own appointees on the bench stop short of dismantling the landmark abortion ruling.
"There are a lot of conservatives who will wash their hands of the whole enterprise if conservatives don't come out the right way on these cases," said Mike Davis, a Senate Judiciary Committee aide who founded the Article III Project, a conservative judicial advocacy group.
The mounting concerns among social conservative stakeholders and anti-abortion activists -- which come as two abortion-related cases are set to be decided by the Supreme Court in the coming months -- stem from a series of episodes where Republican-appointed justices have sided with their liberal counterparts in cases involving LGBTQ rights, the Affordable Care Act and religious liberty -- blindsiding conservative groups that helped shepherd them through the Senate confirmation process and sparking tense debates inside the conservative movement over the vetting process of nominees.