Scottsdale legal firm is at the epicenter of America's anti-abortion earthquake

People who live on top of fault lines can go for years, decades, lifetimes without feeling the slightest tremor.

Then, the seemingly dormant tectonic plates below them begin sliding, bumping, and the resulting friction sends waves of energy to the surface causing the ground to shake, structures to collapse, tsunamis to form.

Socially, politically and legally, that is what happened when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.It was a social shift of seismic proportions. And the epicenter was … Scottsdale.

There have been plenty of aftershocks, all emanating from the same low-slung office complex east of Loop 101, the headquarters of Alliance Defending Freedom.

ADF helped overturn Roe v. Wade

The group’s offices may not be imposing, but beneath the surface there are 4,500 affiliated attorneys working for what they believe to be a legal “ministry” that proudly flaunts its role in reversing Roe v. Wade.

And that’s just a small part of the group’s so-called Christian mission.

Lawyers from the group represented the anti-abortion doctor in Arizona in the case where the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the 1864 abortion ban.

Alliance senior counsel Jake Warner said in a written statement about that decision, “Life is a human right, and today’s decision allows the state to respect that right and fully protect life again — just as the Legislature intended.”

Arizona doctors: Will soon perform abortions in California

Alliance Defending Freedom is at the Supreme Court trying to limit women’s access to the most commonly used abortion pill.

And lawyers from the Alliance argued this week before the court in defense of an Idaho abortion ban that has turned some women with crisis pregnancies into medical refugees, in which one hospital has transported at least four patients out of state for emergency abortions.

It has powerful House, court connections

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, worked for more than a decade at the Alliance.

While there, he wrote occasional opinion pieces saying, for instance, that if same sex marriage was legalized “polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection” and that “homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

The group continues to fight against the equal rights gains made by the LGBTQ community. So much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated Alliance Defending Freedom as a “hate group.”

And it has the ultimate legal connections.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barret has taught lectures supported by the group. Alumni of the Alliance’s training program for law students have clerked for Barrett and Justice Samuel Alito.

In describing Alliance Defending Freedom during an interview with National Public Radio, New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick, who has written about the organization, said the group “looked at a world where there was a constitutional right to abortion, where there were significant barriers between church and state, and they set out to undo both of those things.”Or, as ADF’s senior counsel Jeffrey Ventrella said, “In other words, as another guy put it once, something like, to ask Christianity to stay out of certain territory is to ask God not to be God, if he, in fact, is the sovereign Lord. We must champion these things.”

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scottsdale is the legal epicenter of an anti-abortion earthquake