Actually, culturally is the bigger and better change, IMO, because if the culture changes, you change the demand for abortion, which means there are fewer of them even if they are still legal.
And realistically, even if Roe is gone, without the cultural change, laws will change if necessary to provide for abortions to be just as available as they are now.
Dear Amelia,
Folks who are active in the pro-life movement haven't been forgetting about the cultural change. In fact, practically speaking, it is cultural change that takes up most of the time and energy and money & stuff the really committed pro-lifers spend.
For the really involved pro-lifers, "welcomed into life" isn't rhetoric. Folks work real hard to take care of women and their children who find themselves in crisis pregnancies. Although the abortion industry is lucrative and chokes on its own profits, nonetheless, there are several times as many crisis pregnancy and pregnancy aid centers as there are abortion mills. And the number of active folks out there working to welcome children into life, and support women in tough circumstances is at least an order of magnitude greater than the number of evildoers working hard to kill every baby before she can take her own breath.
But whether or not these things are true, if Roe is overturned, there will be legal consequences. Immediately.
A little googling revealed that of the 50 states, 16 still have unrepealed pre-Roe laws severely restricting abortion. Another 11 have laws on the books severely restricting abortion that were passed AFTER Roe, which say that if Roe is overturned, they take effect.
And 40 states have passed significant restrictions on late-term abortions that are currently inoperative due to Roe.
Thus, if Roe were to be overturned, the next day, most abortions would be illegal in most of the states, and at least a significant proportion of abortions would be illegal in 80% of the states.
What would happen then? I'd expect that in short order, the bluest of the blue states would move to an unrestricted abortion license, and the rest of the states would place significant restriction ranging from significant regulation of late-term abortions to nearly banning abortions even in the first trimester.
But I also suspect that many folks who right now think of themselves as "pro-choice" (but when closely queried reveal that they would prefer restrictions that would effectively ban most abortions) would start to think of themselves as "pro-life."
And that's because a significant portion of the population is really more than anything, "pro status quo."
You can see it in Mr. Bush's approval numbers. In the upper 40s throughout much of the summer, by election day, when most folks expected he'd win, he was at 51%. Now he's at 56%. In less than two weeks, 5% of the population has moved on job approval.
It creates cognitive dissonance to be in disagreement with "the way things are." Lots of folks deal with the cognitive dissonance by going with the flow, by viewing the status quo, whatever it is, as the right way for things to be.
The day after Roe was overturned, I'd expect this phenomenon to begin. Just as it is currently very, very difficult to get enough folks to support a Human Life Amendment, because it would change the status quo, the day after the overturning of Roe, it would become very hard to achieve a national consensus for a relatively unrestricted abortion license, because it would change the status quo.
"And realistically, even if Roe is gone, without the cultural change,..."
Really, Amelia, that train has already left the station. Culture is working against the death-mongers. Science is working against the death-mongers. Popular knowledge and belief are working against the death-mongers.
The only thing the death-mongers have left is lots of money. Lots and lots and lots of money. But even money fails, at some point.
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