Is Dobbs the Death of 'Pro-Life' Demagoguing?

From a Vox story comes the following potentially good news following from a rash of thwarted attempts by theocratic Republicans to ban abortion outright in red states.

Namely, the prospect of having to face electoral losses might help the GOP overcome its tendency to pretend abortion isn't as popular as most polls indicate it is:

Image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.

The special session [in the South Carolina legislature] brought into stark relief what happens when the rhetoric of anti-[abortion rights] politicians clashes with real life -- real people's problems, needs, and beliefs -- after the Supreme Court demolished the legal guardrails of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto (D) told Vox.

"[Anti-[abortion rights] legislators] could make whatever political points they wanted to, because they had a backstop," he said. "They knew nothing they passed was ever going to go into effect. They could pass all they wanted to, and it didn't matter -- and it allowed them to let their rhetoric to just soar to the red meat of their party, because they could gin up the party knowing that nothing they said was ever going to be enacted into law. Then, all of a sudden [...] it's like the dog that caught the bus." [Replaced choice with abortion rights, bold added]

This is a hopeful possibility, if it pans out, but as the radical anti-energy agenda passed as "inflation reduction" by the Democrats might indicate, it's something we will need to see to believe: Each party has dangerous, anti-freedom agenda items it seems hell-bent on passing on the mistaken idea that these are the right thing to do. The Democrats want to ban "unclean" energy and the GOP wants to impose a similarly religious ban on reproductive freedom.

In the meantime at least, it is good to know that even in a state like South Carolina, a complete ban on abortion isn't a sure thing.

-- CAV