One Zachary Karabell (shockingly, a middle-aged white guy with a receding hairline who works as an investment fund manager and has very likely never been pregnant) has this modest proposal for the Democratic party:

[W]hat if they did something utterly unpredictable? What if the Democrats simply decided to walk away from this particular battle, a tactical retreat that no Republican in their right mind (pun intended) expects? What if, yes, the Democrats decided that to let those proverbial chips fall where they may, and allow for the possibility that the Supreme Court just might overturn Roe and declare that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

The Democrats would be far better off.

To begin with, let’s once again lay to rest a popular canard: overturning Roe would not, repeat would not, make abortion illegal. That simple truth ain’t so simple. In fact, if you stopped ten people on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, where it’s fair to say support for Roe runs high, high, high, seven, eight, or even nine would say that if Supremes overturn Roe, we’re back to the days of dark alleys and wire hangers.

Not true.

If Roe disappears, very little changes - at first. Roe enshrines a federal, constitutional right to privacy, which in turn bars state legislatures from passing laws making abortion illegal. Before Roe, nothing stood in the way of states making abortion legal. Post Roe, nothing would change in the Blue States.

But in many Red states, abortion is already de facto restricted. Try finding an abortion clinic in rural Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia. Abortion is already socially illegal in many parts of the country; mores often matter more than laws.

But if Roe is overturned, suddenly, every state would be forced to discuss and debate, and that would propel the Democrats from defense to offense. . . . [T]here would suddenly be an opportunity to debate choice, privacy, state power versus individual freedoms, morality, life, death, and science.

It’s easy to note the complacency of a man who’s perfectly willing to sell half of America down the river for a tactical advantage to one political party, and the chance to “debate choice”. This hardly deserves comment (though it deserves a full measure of contempt).

But it’s also worth nothing that the seeming logic of this piece does not withstand scrutiny any more than does its morality: It’s true that overturning Roe would not immediately change any state laws on abortion. But the loss of the Roe precedent would immediately trigger complete bans on abortion in at least two states that have already passed laws to that effect, explicitly contingent on the vacating of the Roe precedent. And, of course, it would then be open season on abortion restrictions in many remaining states, where such barriers as arbitrary clinic architecture standards, spousal vetos, and other restrictions have been found unconstitutional only by reliance on Roe. Karabell’s sunny analysis is at least half empty, however much he tries to pretend it’s half full. The apparent stalemate that prevails under Roe does so only because Roe prevents further encroachments on women’s autonomy - not because there is an equilibrium between the pro- and anti-woman forces in the country.

Abandoning Roe would mean abandoning the only thing that keeps abortion from becoming entirely illegal in large parts of the country. It would also free up the Red state anti-choice forces for a concerted assault on choice in the Blue states. There is no chance that the moral right to abortion will be respected in the conservative states if it is not also recognized as a Constitutional right - pro-choicers can “debate choice, privacy, and state power” as much as they like but misogyny is deeply entrenched in Republican country. Women have rights there only because they cannot legally be denied them, not because they are popular, and forfeiting that legal protection means forfeiting women’s freedom there, and engaging in a “debate” over it elsewhere. This is not a “very little” thing, and pretending that it will not have momentous consequences is an exercise in willful denial that no Democrat would engage in on an issue they cared about. This one, of course, is only about women, their bodies, and their freedom, so it’s OK.