Into the Void

I was listening to a podcast about the leak of one of the Supreme Court's draft opinions in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and it was suggested that the next goals of the anti-abortion movement would be to lobby for restrictions or bans in Blue states and to lobby Congress to pass a nationwide law against the procedure.

Personally, I suspect that they'll have better luck in attempting to convince a Republican Congress to enact a nationwide ban. But I also think that it will have to wait for a while, the Republicans are unlikely to win enough seats in the Senate to force cloture votes (needed to end a filibuster) anytime soon, and I doubt that they'd seek to change Senate rules simply for a Culture War concern. (By the way, I'd also heard that some people think that their may even be enough momentum to pass a Constitutional amendment. Those people are deep in wishful thinking.) My skepticism that voters in Democratic and Democratic-leaning states could be convinced to back greater restrictions on abortion aside, I have noticed that pro-life groups regularly pay for billboards in and around Seattle to make their point.

Generally, I consider it a waste of time. Mainly because, like a lot of amateur political advertising, it preaches to the choir. Repeating for the umpteenth time the point in a pregnancy at which a heartbeat can be detected or comparing a small fetus to a diamond and asking which is the more valuable does nothing to address the concerns of voters who see abortion bans as promoting forced pregnancies or another form of attack on women and their rights. It's simply virtue signalling. But then again, billboards aren't really all that expensive to rent.

This public posturing is a symptom of the current phase of the American public sorting itself into two mutually hostile camps to either side of a mostly disinterested middle. Partisan actors have too little respect for anyone who doesn't already agree with them to bother actually attempting to address them. Which is a shame. Not that I would like to see abortion here in Washington come to look like what Texas or Mississippi have in mind, but an actual discussion of the interests on both sides might actually result an a more adult way of going about things than is currently the norm.