No, Dobbs v. Jackson Isn't Going to Hand the Midterms to Democrats
An unprecedented SCOTUS leak has revealed that the court is set to rule on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and will allow Mississippi to restrict some abortions. Already, it’s almost impossible to hear anything over the shrieking, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the Left.
But if you strain your ears and concentrate really, really hard, you can detect a separate faint murmur of concern. Some of those on the right, who have been getting through the disaster that is the Biden administration by looking forward to the absolute bloodbath the 2022 midterms promise to be, are quietly voicing their fear that Roe v. Wade being overturned will energize the Left and hand the midterms over to the Democrats.
No worries — Athena is here to allay your fears. Without further preamble, here are the factors which will blunt the political blowback that conventional wisdom has always said would result from Roe being overturned.
Having Children Out of Wedlock Has Been Normalized
Things have changed a great, great deal since 1973, when the Supreme Court discovered a theretofore unnoticed Constitutional right to procure an abortion. In 1965, a mere 3.1% of white babies were born to unwed mothers. At 24%, the rate of black infants born to single moms was considered a crisis. But by 2020, the overall rate of out-of-wedlock births had exploded to over 40%. While this is in many ways a cultural catastrophe, a silver lining has been that fewer women are shamed into ending their unplanned pregnancies. Abortion is becoming a solution looking for a problem.
Science!™ Showed Us That It’s a Baby, Not a “Clump of Cells”
Fetal imaging was in its infancy in 1973. By the late 1970s, ultrasound scans came into wide use in the United States as part of prenatal care, and the technology has only improved since then. Pregnant women can see their baby’s heart beating as early as their sixth week of pregnancy, and expectant parents proudly show off pictures of their first-trimester child. Unborn babies can now be viewed in three dimensions, full color, and in motion. Now that Americans can see with their own eyes that a fetus is a fellow human being, it’s much harder to convince them that abortion terminates nothing more than a “clump of cells.”
Science!™ Helps More Premature Babies Survive and Thrive
In one NIH study, the rate of survival for infants born at 24–28 weeks increased from 9% between 1966-1970 to 50.3% between 1977-1982. By 2016, babies born at just 24 weeks in the United States had a 68% chance of survival.
Today, a baby born at as little as 22 weeks gestation can survive, and babies born at 23 weeks and up have increasingly better chances of not suffering long-term health problems from their premature arrival.
Intensive care wasn’t really a thing before the mid-60s, and babies born prematurely in 1973 didn’t always have the best chance of surviving. Thus, it was easier to think of pre-term babies as mere fetuses or clumps of cells. But the age of viability has been trending downward as medicine has improved, making second and third-trimester abortion repugnant to an increasing number of Americans.
Not Everyone Loves Abortion on Demand Right Up to the Moment of Birth
As my colleague Matt Margolis noted (behind the VIP paywall), a large majority (70%) of Americans either oppose all abortion (20%) or favor some restrictions on it (50%). If the Supremes indeed uphold Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state of Mississippi would restrict abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy — conforming with the beliefs of a solid majority of Americans.
For our VIPs: Upholding the Mississippi Abortion Law Would Be Mainstream
Dobbs Will Have Been in Effect for Months by November and the World Will Still Be Turning
All the states in the union are aware of the impending court decision and have already or are currently preparing their own laws regarding the practice of abortion. As these laws will be crafted at a more local level, they will better reflect the preferences of each state’s citizens. By the time November rolls around, there may even be less discord and strife regarding abortion than there is now. At any rate, the Worst Thing Ever! will have come to pass, the world will have continued to turn, and people will have gone back to being more concerned about inflation, the Biden Recession, and looming war.
Related: And the Winner of the First Election Held in a Roe-Less U.S. Is …
The Protestors Are Going to Horrify Everyone
The Left’s reaction to this leak — let alone the moment the actual decision is handed down — is going to be absolute armageddon. Think of every meme of a reeeeing social justice warrior you’ve ever seen since Donald J. Trump rode down the golden escalator, add them all together, then multiply that by the Democrats’ next “infrastructure” bill.
Activists are going to go right around the bend. Normal people will be deluged with disgusting images, costumes, and behavior. I wouldn’t be surprised if terroristic bombings and shootings crop up, and the siege on the Supreme Court will make the Kavanaugh hearings seem genteel. The very people who have been cawing about the dreaded January 6 “insurrection” will suddenly be A-OK with a full-court attempt to disrupt proceedings.
Normals are going to see all of this and shrink from the very thought of leaving these people in power another second. In fact, I predict the Left’s overreaction will wind up motivating more people to vote Republican.
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