In the immediate aftermath of the judgment, pro-abortion activists took to the streets to literally howl with rage. Many refused to concede what a majority of the public thinks, which is that third-trimester abortions should not be legal. Fighting afresh for the right to any abortions at all, many of these campaigners find themselves pushed into a demonic corner: where, in the name of protecting some abortions, they cannot oppose any abortions. Others, noisily and disastrously, celebrate them.
The anti-abortion side is no better. Having been kicked about for years by liberal activists, here was the chance for conservatives to kick back in turn. “We are not done,” wrote one conservative campaigner. “We are not satisfied. A federal ban on abortion nationwide is the next step.” Which if it were even attempted would of course lead to precisely the same judgement as last week’s, if the court was consistent. For the federal ruling was what got America here in the first place. But who cares about such details as the law when there are liberal tears to rejoice in?
Perhaps this is the conservative backlash — the response to decades of the left rubbing the right’s nose in it. Perhaps it is inevitable that liberal overreach will be responded to by conservative overreach. Either way, the US is now moving into an uncertain and deeply destabilizing era. At a time when it needs to solve new problems both within and without, it has been invited instead to relitigate liberal rights which had been thought settled for half a century.
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