Closing in on an anniversary

Has the Dobbs decision had its intended effect?

On Sunday it will be a year since I began this Substack, but that’s not why I’m writing. The very first paragraph had to do with the subject of this story:

I said this on social media and it bears repeating here: “It's a sunny Friday, the Shorebirds can put their wretched first half behind them starting tonight, and abortion is no longer justified by a wrongly-decided Supreme Court case from 49 years ago.

Good way to start the weekend.”

Since then, how much progress have we made? Well, the Shorebirds had another poor first half but that’s why I also write The Knothole.

Seriously, if you figure abortion was available in all 50 states - at least in a theoretical if not practical matter due to the number of clinics nationwide - the day before Dobbs was decided, the fact that 14 states have total bans on abortion is progress. Most of these states are in a swath which runs from Texas to West Virginia through the heart of the Bible Belt South, but there is the surprise of Wisconsin on that list - if only for a short while longer as the courts and legislature race to overturn their ban on abortion that dates to 1849 and was no longer rendered moot by Roe v. Wade.

One nearly immediate result of the Dobbs decision was the flipping of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from a GOP majority to a Democrat one thanks to an election this spring. Of course, Republicans - who are afraid of their shadow on the abortion subject - blame the Dobbs decision for their candidate’s demise instead of the millions and millions of dollars and hundreds of GOTV volunteers pro-abortion activists shoveled into the judicial race, which will also impact a 2024 swing state. Get used to it, and work on hearts and minds like you should be.

There are also six other states which have bans ranging from six to twenty weeks.

Of course, there are also states (like Delaware) that shamefully created free-for-alls for abortion on their books while Donald Trump was in office, anticipating that a decision such as Dobbs would someday come down the pike. While it’s within their rights to do that, the fact that they’ve gone 100-0 on what’s (at best) a 50-50 issue leads me to think they just don’t have a whole lot of respect for the people they represent. If they’re going to err, they should err on the side of the right to life as their more truly progressive counterparts did.

So if I were to make a prediction for the electoral future, I would anticipate the big push to object to the Dobbs decision will come next June, at a time when the two major-party nominees will have been decided (if not formally nominated.) It’ll be time to resurrect shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and have the big pro-abortion protests to whip up a voting frenzy among the misinformed who see abortion as a form of birth control and a human right, forgetting that our nation was founded with the inalienable God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It’s very tough to do the latter two without the first one, isn’t it?

Once upon a time, Democrats said that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Of course, they weren’t being serious about that, but it was enough to get the older women who actually believed what they were saying to vote for them.

It seems to me that they can do an abortion rather safely in a hospital or doctor’s office moreso than a clinic, but the Left complains every time they try and make sure abortions are conducted in a place where help is readily available should things go south.

As for legal, that’s up to each state. Until 2017, Delaware had a common-sense restriction on abortions: legal in the cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Most people accept that as a fallback compromise position. That also makes it relatively rare, which is what I thought the Democrats wanted - and the proof that they were lying comes every time they demand abortion right up until birth.

Here’s what the Dobbs decision did. It exposed the people who continually paid lip service to being pro-life, knowing that there was nothing which could be done because of the backstop of Roe v. Wade, as phonies. Most of them folded like a cheap tent when it came time to actually act upon what they had the opportunity to do. If nothing else, that’s where we have progressed in the last year, and this will be the first election we can truly separate the chaff and the wheat.