For many years, I was fairly confident that abortion would remain legal in the US for a simple reason - the median voter. A consistent theme in public opinion polling is that a majority of Americans want some form. Sure, there is a strong pro-life movement, but it’s an uphill battle when about 70% to 80% of the population wants it to be legal in some form.
In the late 2010s, many people, including myself, realized that abortion rights were in trouble because of some very statistically unlikely events: the electoral college produced a “minority” winner in Trump in 2016, older liberal Supreme Court justices refused to retire when Democrats had a Senate majority in 2008, and recent Republicans just blocked Obama’s appointments. The deeper issue is the American system is a combination of direct elections and non-democratic institutions. Thus, you had a situation where some politicians could seriously deviate from the median voter.
After Dobbs, I expected that, within a few months, a few dozen states would ban abortion - the entire South, the Mountain States, the Great Plains, and the most conservative parts of the Midwest. However, as of November 2022, according to Wiki, 12 states, mainly in the South, have banned abortion and two more have zero providers. Then, we have had two conservative states directly vote on abortion rights - Kentucky and Kansas - and voters said “yes” to abortion at 52% and 59%. Also, exit polls suggest that anti-Dobbs sentiment helped prevent the “red wave” that one would normally expect at a midterm election.
These results suggest that the overturn of Dobbs was less due to a serious reconsideration of abortion by the American political system than simply getting lucky in the Electoral College. If you believe that story, then you might predict that Roe would be restored the next time a Democratic president gets a friendly senate and two seats. You would also believe that pro-choice activists have a simple strategy - just put abortion rights on state referenda. My guess is that they would probably win in most places except the Deep South and some Mountain states.
Abortion access is now in a weird situation. Pro-lifers won a big victory with recent Supreme Court appointments, but they haven’t made a dent in public opinion. Since most states have a referendum system, it’s quite possible that the “no-abortion zone” will shrink from fourteen states to a handful over the next few years. And the next time court vacancies open up with a Democratic White House and Senate, the no-abortion zone will be retired.
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