More frequently than you would expect, anti-choicers simply can’t control themselves, and throw back the curtain on their real agenda and tactics. The editors of National Review Online do so today with their critical take on the South Dakota abortion ban, arguing both that it will likely fail and that it goes too far outside the “savvy incremental strategy” already in place to chip away women’s rights an inch at a time until there are none left. In truth, that strategy was always evident, and pro-choicers have been pointing this out all along. But somehow, many people managed to convince themselves that the medievals really cared about their issue du jour - that the fight at any given moment really was about waiting periods, or parental notification, or dilation-and-extraction, or whatever, and not really about the wholesale loss of women’s reproductive freedom across the board - that these issues were substantive matters that touched on some moral point the anti-choicers felt was unique and significant, and were not merely carefully focus-grouped tactics in an assault on the basic principle of autonomy that underlay them all. And each time the anti-choicers let us peek behind the curtain, we discover that what they’re really up to is exactly what they appeared to be up to: arrogating control of women’s bodies to their own reactionary, misogynist, sex-fearful, overwhelmingly male, religious-extremist selves. Is anyone listening this time?

First, NROers make it clear that the South Dakota ban - though they regard it as a tactical mistake - is exactly where they hope to end up: no abortion under any circumstances except possibly a direct threat of death to the woman in question. But then they reveal the tactical plan already in place for getting there:

[South-Dakota-style anti-abortion laws are a tactical mistake because they] will shift the conversation from the subset of abortions that is politically hardest to defend (partial-birth abortions) to the subset that are among the easiest (abortions arising from rape). . . .

Pro-lifers have gained ground over the last decade and a half by pursuing a savvy incremental strategy. That strategy puts the end of Roe within sight. If Roe falls, pro-lifers should then try to persuade the public in each state to prohibit most abortions. After that, they should try to persuade them to prohibit abortion in the case of rape and incest. To try to collapse this multi-stage process into an instant is to ignore social and political circumstances, and to throw away patiently and painfully won political victories for the sake of an emotional gesture.

What are they telling us?

• The dilation-and-extraction ban, still being fought with such fervency state-by-state and at the federal level, ostensibly because it represents such an important point of moral distinction in the practice of abortion, was adopted as a political tactic specifically because they thought they could make an effective public issue out of it. (No surprise to those who actually understand the procedure and why it is used, but perhaps a revelation to anyone who uses the phrase “partial-birth” unironically.)
• Their apparent willingness to tolerate abortion in cases of the most extreme invasions of a woman’s autonomy - rape and incest - is merely a diversionary tactic also adopted for purposes of political expediency. (Contradicting the supposed “moderates” in the anti-woman camp, who grudgingly admit there are some traumas women do not deserve to suffer.)
• There is a step-by-step “incremental strategy” to roll back women’s autonomy entirely; the fact that new and more imaginative restrictions on abortion keep appearing one by one is not a coincidence but a deliberately-planned long-range strategy, and this fact is not simply liberal paranoia but the self-described policy of the anti-choice planners themselves. (So perhaps we can stop deluding ourselves.)
• The argument that “if Roe is repealed all it will mean is that abortion will revert back to a state issue” is not merely heartless, but part of the deliberate strategy of the right wing. They want it to go to the states, where a majority of states already have almost no protections for women’s freedom, and legions of rabid Christian extremists are waiting to launch a war on the remaining ones - think the mid-1980s forever in every state that still allows reproductive autonomy. (Remember, this is their strategy.)
• There is a planned, “incremental” strategy for the state-level war, involving increasing restrictions on abortion step-by-step, and ending with the explicitly announced goal of forced pregnancy for survivors of rape and incest. (Yes, they’re really that crazy, and really that subversive. This is what they tell each other. Everything to the contrary is misdirection.)

I wonder, what does William Saletan make of this? Did he intend to be the NRO anti-choice poster-boy? Does he believe that if he cedes to them the first two or three steps of their incremental strategy that they’ll then just stop?

But hostile tactics call for a tactical response. What is the best strategy for those who care about women’s lives?

One argument is that we must stop the incremental rollback of freedom at every step - that we cannot afford to give ground at any point along the way (and cannot afford to rely on Roe, which becomes increasingly porous year by year, for a blanket protection of women’s rights). Another is that fighting every incremental battle, especially at a deficit of political, monetary, and organizational power, is simply fighting their battle on their terms - that a broad-based defense of abortion rights as fundamental must be made to awaken the public to the growing danger. (I.e., we must make it clear what is at stake: abortion rights are the bulwark against forced pregnancy, and they arise from the same moral and legal ground as rights to contraception, sexual privacy, and the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws.)

Most importantly, how do we move from defense to offense, given that the hostile forces have dedicated themselves to a total war for the unyielding occupation of women’s bodies and lives?