Ross Douthat thinks that Dobbs is best understood as an opportunity for the pro-life side to persuade the rest of us that abortion is both wrong and unnecessary. I agree. However, his dream will never come true, for the following reasons:
- As I have noted innumerable times, the genuinely “pro-life” component of the opponents to abortion is relatively small. Reactionary red state politicians interested only in making the lives of “wayward” women miserable consequently are not politically compelled to pay any attention to pro-lifers who want to make them better. That is why the states with the most restrictive abortion regimes typically have the flimsiest welfare states.
- Douthat imagines a scenario in which the pro-lifers join the left to expand the welfare state to improve the lot of pregnant women. Because, in addition to being a numerically insignificant group, the genuine pro-lifers are typically absolutists, there is no way they will ever reach a grand bargain with the left, which would have to include permitting abortion under some limited circumstances. So long as that kind of deal is implausible, the pro-lifers will never have any leverage with the rest of the reactionaries.