On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion almost 50 years after it had been recognized and almost immediately restricting abortion in states with trigger laws. Most Americans support Roe and legal abortion, and the decision will have disastrous consequences, disproportionately affecting Black women and other women of color.

Media Matters compiled and analyzed Facebook posts from news and politics pages on June 24, the day the decision was announced, and we found that right-leaning pages earned the majority of interactions on related posts from news and politics pages even as ideologically nonaligned pages accounted for the majority of related posts.

In fact, right-leaning pages earned nearly 7.7 million interactions — or nearly 52% — on over 2,400 posts, or roughly 28% of examined posts. Ideologically nonaligned pages earned nearly 3.7 million interactions — or nearly 25% — on nearly 4,700 posts, or 55%. Left-leaning pages earned roughly 3.5 million interactions — or nearly 24% — on over 1,400 posts, or 17%.

Right-leaning pages also accounted for 7 of the 10 posts about the decision with the most interactions. These posts celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision, as did posts from users in right-wing groups.

In addition to celebrating the decision, right-leaning pages  — and users in right-wing groups — amplified other narratives also being pushed by right-wing media, calling for more restrictive laws, claiming there would be riots from the left in response to the decision, and mocking liberals and media figures upset with the decision.

Methodology

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.

For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.

The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.

Every day, Media Matters also uses Facebook's CrowdTangle tool and this methodology to identify and share the 10 posts with the most interactions from top political and news-related Facebook pages.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts for the pages on this list that were posted on June 24, 2022, and were related to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. We reviewed data for these posts, including total interactions (reactions, comments, and shares).

We defined posts as related to the trial if they had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “abortion,” “pro-life,” “pro life,” “abortionist,” “repro,” “reproductive rights,” “fetus,” “unborn,” “preborn,” “planned parenthood,” “fake clinic,” “mifepristone,” “misoprostol,” “prolife,” “partial birth,” “partial-birth,” “crisis pregnancy,” “pregnancy,” “pregnant,” “fertility,” “gestation,” “full-term,” “late-term,” “abort,” “abortions,” “infanticide,” “pro choice,” “prochoice,” “pro-choice,” “pro abortion,” “pro-abortion,” “proabortion,” “proaborts,” “anti-abortion,” “antiabortion,” “anti abortion,” “anti-choice,” “anti choice,” “antichoice,” “baby killer,” “baby killers,” “in utero,” “in the womb,” “fetal remains,” “fetal cells,” “baby parts,” “Roe v Wade,” “Roe v. Wade,” “Roe vs Wade,” “Roe vs. Wade,” “Roe,” “Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” “Planned Parenthood vs. Casey,” “Planned Parenthood v Casey,” “Planned Parenthood vs Casey,” “Dobbs,” “Dobbs v. Jackson,” “Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” “trigger laws,” or “trigger law.”