I was just reading the transcript of an Ezra Klein interview with the prominent social conservative commentator Erika Bachiochi. Her views on the appropriateness of sex within marriage are so consistent with those of the Catholic hierarchy, and so inconsistent with everyone else’s (including Catholic lay people), that they require no response. Her more interesting opinion, however, is that the overturning of Roe will lead to a productive dialogue between the right and left that will ultimately result in the construction of a welfare state which is more responsive to the needs of women and children than the market. Is she on target here?
Let’s look to the past to answer that question. We already have extensive experience with a world in which abortion is illegal, and contraception is severely limited. Was that world characterized by an extensive welfare state? Was it more hospitable to women with unwanted pregnancies than today’s world? And, to bring the matter up to date, are the red states with the most stringent abortion regulations currently proposing dramatic increases in social spending to deal with the issues that will be created by millions of new unwanted pregnancies?
Of course not! Abortion wasn’t legalized because men wanted to party without consequences, or because employers thought it was a good way to keep their female employees on board. It was legalized because women thought–probably correctly–that the economic, physical, and social consequences of an unwanted pregnancy were unbearable. They will become so again when Roe is overturned, which is exactly what most of the right has in mind. Bachiochi, and other right-wing pundits expressing similar views, are nothing more than useful idiots for the hard right.