Post-Roe, Republicans who want to outlaw abortion will need to come up with better answers, and accept political responsibility for the consequences. The teenage girls raped by their stepfathers, parents with anencephalic fetuses and women prone to life-threatening complications . . . all will show up sobbing on cable news. And what will be done for their unwanted babies? Are Republicans going to support more generous welfare and disability programs?

That’s not to say that Republicans are the dog that caught the car, as one popular line has it. Republicans who believe that abortion is murder, or close to it, will be rightly pleased if the Supreme Court clears the way for more restrictions. They just also have to be prepared for what comes next. They’ll need to refocus activist energy on states rather than sexier national races — and also prepare those activists for the inevitable compromises they’ll have to make when writing abortion law becomes a practical problem rather than a symbolic gesture.

Something similar could be said for Democrats. “Abortion should be legal right up to the delivery table” isn’t much more popular than “make incest victims bear the child” — as Democrats have discovered when left-leaning politicians made ham-handed attempts to defend the purist positions demanded by their own activist base. Democrats, too, prefer promulgating gauzy principles — “a woman’s right to choose” — rather than the actual details of allowing elective abortions well into the second trimester.