These data suggest a few things for the pro-life movement: First, it should expect an enormous campaign by abortion rights advocates to mobilize the pro-choice majority that favors legal abortion in the first trimester. While evidence suggests that pro-life voters have tended to make abortion more of a priority in their voting than in previous elections, abortion rights advocates will try to change that in 2022 if Roe is overturned. Pro-lifers should be prepared for that onslaught, both to mobilize their own side and to minimize the other side’s impact. Angry or violent confrontations on college campuses or in front of abortion providers probably would not do the cause much good.

Pro-life forces should also resist any attempt to federalize abortion law for the foreseeable future. Since half of all Democratic voters believe there should be no restrictions on abortion at all, any pro-life federal bill will be filibustered in the Senate. Democrats would certainly seek to codify Roe, and any federal compromise would likely at least enshrine first trimester abortions into federal law, eliminating the ability of conservative states to enact their own laws. Should a federal law pass, it would likely stand for many decades, much like the Missouri Compromise settled the slavery question for more than 30 years despite growing abolitionist sentiment.

Pro-lifers must understand Abraham Lincoln’s famous dictum that “public sentiment is everything.” “With public sentiment,” the Great Emancipator said, “nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” Right now, public sentiment favors unrestricted abortion in the first trimester, the period in which roughly 92 percent of all abortions in the United States are performed. Until that sentiment changes, pro-lifers will not be able to make significant changes to American abortion law even with Roe out of the way.