First and most obviously, it would throw our political parties completely for a loop. That might well be good, since it would put greater pressure on parties to draft realistic, substantive platforms. Voters too might be disoriented by the blurring of familiar political-tribal lines, which should alarm you if you’re currently making a bundle “consulting” for your own super PAC. For everyone else, it’s probably good news. Virtually no one seems to find our current political atmosphere uplifting or healthy.

Old controversies give way to new ones, of course. Sex and human reproduction would surely remain contentious issues. Some alliances might be strained or broken in the process. In recent decades, religious traditionalists (motivated by a love of family and the belief that human life is precious in all phases) have had reason to link arms with resentful masculinists, mainly interested in waging war with feminism. The feminists, for their part, came to see traditional sexual mores as a patriarchal strategy for fencing them out of the public square. In their effort to fight back, they became fellow travelers with sex-positive libertines, demanding contraceptives and legal abortion, and urging women to gratify sexual impulses without shame.

All of these associations could change. Already in the #MeToo movement, we see feminism veering away from sex-positivity, even as certain anti-feminists argue vociferously for the naturalness and normalcy of man’s sexual objectification of woman. In a post-abortion world, we might see women and traditionalists more regularly joining forces, as in earlier periods of American history.