You were serious about that?

I have been arguing with pundits in general and Megan McArdle in particular for making “as someone who is pro-choice [wink] overruling Roe would be no big deal” arguments that were something like conventional wisdom among the pundit class for a very long time. I suppose I should just be gracious about her “whoops, I guess I owe you a coke” mea culpa, but as a frequent first-guesser I can’t resist pointing out again that the the argument has never made any sense:

First, I was right that voter intensity on this issue mattered — but wrong about the distribution of intensity. A lot of people for whom this was a low priority as long as Roe was the law of the land apparently became a lot more intense once Roe fell — almost all of them on the pro-choice side.

“I was wrong that people would care more about whether women in worse socioeconomic circumstances have access to safe and legal abortion than I do” is pretty much the core position of this whole line of punditry. As I’ve said many times, it seems to equate state coercion directed at stopping a medical procedure a quarter of American women obtain as some symbolic culture war rube-running people would quickly get bored with. It’s crazy, but it seems rational when you can take your own access for granted and don’t care about some women with less money in jurisdictions you don’t live have the same rights.

I assume the projection involved in “the people who consistently support Roe by 2-to-1 majorities can’t really care about the issue that much” is too obvious to belabor.

Third, I failed to understand just how badly legislators had drafted many of the “trigger laws” that banned abortion as soon as Roe fell. Operating under the shelter of Roe, politicians had also been thinking symbolically, giving pro-life groups ultra-strict laws that couldn’t command support among even a majority of Republicans, with little concern for the practical details of carrying out those laws. The result has been a parade of horrifying stories as doctors refused to provide abortions to a 10-year-old rape victim, and to adult women whose very-much-wanted pregnancies had gone horribly wrong.

“I didn’t think that the statutes passed by Republican legislators banning virtually all abortions would result in statutes banning virtually all abortion.” This is the problem with getting high on your own “durrrr, Republicans just want abortions to be slightly more difficult to obtain in the second trimester like in France, durrrr” bullshit — when Republicans tell you what they’re going to do and in many cases actually do it you refuse to believe them.

The fundamental issue here not taking either supporters or opponents of abortion rights seriously, and simply assuming that both of them basically agree with your own incoherent views on the subject:

This has surprised me more than anything, because pro-life activists used to be good at picking strategic battles, at focusing on popular issues where they could win, such as parental consent or bans on particularly gruesome procedures. If they truly want to reduce the numbers of abortions, they’ll need to return to those strategic roots. Otherwise — if I dare make another prediction — they will end up where I am now: watching pro-choice initiatives win in state after state, and wondering how they got it so wrong.

Quick quiz: why did opponents of legal abortion generally not enact extremist statutes reflecting their least popular views between 1973 and 2021? It is truly a mystery that will never be explained if you are determined not to explain it. and if you want to make six figures as a national pundit this is probably a sound course to take.