Pro-life politics in the United States used to be mostly posturing and positioning, the taking of extreme rhetorical positions at no real-world cost. Republicans in red states could enact bills that burdened women who sought abortions, knowing that many voters shrugged off these statutes and counted on the courts to protect women’s rights. Now the highest court has abdicated its protective role, and those voters will have to either submit to their legislature’s burdens or replace the legislators.

That will likely mean that every legislative race in every currently red state will become a referendum on how strictly to police the women of that state. If a Republican president is elected in 2024 and signs a national abortion restriction in 2025, then every House and Senate race will likewise become a referendum on policing women. I don’t imagine that will be a very comfortable situation for the pro-policing side. Republican politicians who indulged their pro-life allies as a low-cost way to mobilize voters who did not share the party’s economic agenda are about to discover that the costs have jumped, and that many of the voters who do share the party’s economic agenda care more about their intimate autonomy.

Abortion politics is about to transition from being the conservative ideologue’s proof of purity to the Republican politician’s most vexed and intractable quagmire. We may all be surprised at how rapidly the politicians start looking for some escape.