More Scary Roe-Wade Backpedaling

More Scary Roe-Wade Backpedaling



"Letting Go of Roe v. Wade," reads the headline in The Atlantic. It's an elaborately constucted argument balanced on the head of a pin:



"The day the Court overturns Roe... thousands of conservative politicians will face a dreadful choice: backtrack from the anti-abortion ground they have staked out and risk infuriating their pro-life base..."



Which they will never ever do.



"or deliver on their promise to eliminate the right to abortion..."



Which they could well do. But here's the weak link:



"and risk the wrath of a moderate, pro-choice majority... Abortion will suddenly become a voting issue for millions of pro-choice voters who care about it but know today that the right is protected not by congressional politics but by the courts."



The most likely result is that choice will become a victim of a passionate minority. In electoral politics, a minority focused on a single issue or a cluster of issues can defeat a large majority that's on the other side but only softly. Intensity beats larger numbers. We saw this in the 1970s with the defeat of ERA, and in the 1990s with the gun control issue. And without Roe-Wade, we could well see it with choice. This is not an issue the Democratic Party can afford to back down on.