Leadership Quote by Robert Casey

“Vast” does the heavy lifting here. Casey isn’t arguing biology or constitutional theory; he’s reframing abortion as an economy with its own momentum, a machine that keeps running because money makes it run. By calling it an “industry” and attaching a clean, impressive figure, he invites readers to picture assembly lines, marketing budgets, and executives - not patients, risk, or medical judgment. The moral claim is smuggled in through market language: if abortion is a business, then it’s presumed to be predatory, self-perpetuating, and indifferent to human cost.

The timing matters. “In the wake of Roe and Doe” points to 1973’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, decisions that expanded legal access and, in Casey’s telling, unleashed profiteers. Subtext: legalization didn’t just permit a right; it created a constituency that will lobby to protect revenue. That insinuation turns a contested legal issue into a corruption story, and corruption stories travel well in politics because they don’t require settling the underlying ethical debate. You only need to believe someone is getting rich.

Casey, a Democratic governor known for anti-abortion views, is also speaking to intra-party tension. The line tries to peel away liberal sympathy by borrowing a critique typically aimed at corporate health care: follow the money. It’s a strategic inversion - casting restrictions not as moral policing but as consumer protection against a newly minted marketplace that supposedly depends on more abortions, not fewer.