Seriously, the Dobbs case was literally the first notable victory for the American Right in the culture war since the start of the Cold War. Before this they had lost or were clearly losing every single fight - school prayer, abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage, the modern 'queer' degeneracy spinning wildly out of the latter - and Dobbs was the very first time they managed any serious pushback on any of these fronts in 50+ years. (The Kennedy v. Bremerton case on school prayer barely counts in comparison, at that point things were so far gone that SCOTUS had to protect the individual's right to public religious observance rather than school prayer specifically)
Politics is the art of the possible. So sure, it's not practical to push for a Human Life Amendment that bans abortion nationwide with few to no exceptions, because multiple generations have grown up with 50 years of Roe being the law of the land and deprogramming usually takes a good deal of time. Literally nobody important brought that idea up this cycle other than McConnell anyway, and he obviously would prefer to remain in opposition than have to deal with a GOP majority he can't control. They should look to how the first Republicans handled slavery instead.
Fremont & Lincoln didn't stick immediate abolition on their platforms because they knew it'd never attract votes outside of abolitionist bastions like New England. But they still pushed the envelope where they could (Free Soil - banning slavery from the western territories, gradual emancipation in places like NY, etc.), and left it to activists like Harriet Beecher Stowe to shift the culture while more aggressively fighting the (increasingly literal) battles where the atmosphere was favorable to their cause (like Slave Power and its consequences, incl. Dred Scott, and Bleeding Kansas)
So too should the GOP maintain a pro-life-leaning but 'we'll respect state decisions on the matter' stance nationally, pushing abortion as far as practical on the state level (ex. a total ban would be viable in ruby-red South Dakota, but purpler North Carolina requires a more flexible approach in the short to medium term). It's the battles where the Right has more momentum, like tranny bathrooms and drag queen story hour, that should be fought more aggressively in the short to medium run with an eye on eventually shifting the culture in a more conservative direction (ie. by forcing woke teachers out of their positions, undermining teachers' unions, flipping school boards, building on the Kennedy case to move toward the restoration of school prayer, etc.) and making things like the Human Life Amendment possible. Basically, anything but abandoning yet another front on the culture war, and not even half a year after the first big breakthrough there too.
Sure it's going to take a while, but again that's a given due to how long abortion has been legal and the idea that it's some inalienable woman's right has been drilled into the heads of generations by academia. Unless by some miracle zoomers & Millennials become so disgusted with themselves and their culture that we get the same cultural snapback which saw Britain flip from the decadence of the Regency Era to the much stricter morality of the Victorian period or Germany go from the rampant child prostitution and assorted degeneracy of Weimar to electing Literally Hitler and tossing Hirschfeld's scribbles onto the pyre in 10 years anytime soon, the long game is all we've got. It's also how the Left has gotten to this point too, after all, the Democrats of the 1970s were hardly coming out swinging with nine-month and post-birth abortions, drag kids and abolishing whiteness either.
If this ruling was possible now, then it would have been possible after the midterms.
Meanwhile, most babies who would have died before are still dying now. Blue states haven’t missed a beat, and most red states still permit early abortion. At best, we’ve inconvenienced abortionists with a bit of interstate travel.
And all it cost us was the fucking country. In the end, more babies will die. Because we blew an opportunity to seize power and reverse the cultural rot on a federal level.
The reason the right has done nothing but lose for the last 75 years is our inability to grasp the bigger, long term picture. While the left took control of the schools and engaged their long march through the institutions, conservatives retreated to principled individualism of slow and steady defeat.
We could have held off on roe v wade and decimated democrats in the midterms. From there, 2024 becomes a shoe-in. Instead, we took a mostly symbolic victory that directly galvanized our enemy demographics.
You know what’s really funny? For all the shit we give the leftists about their lack of future-time orientation and their emotional incontinence, their movements still have cohesive strategy dictated by powerful central leadership. We crack wise about their rejection of natural hierarchies, and yet they possess the one hierarchy necessary to accomplish their political and cultural goals.
"Sure the country is in terrible shape, but what if you wanted to shoot a baby in the face and you couldn't?" asked local woman Rhonda McMullin. "I may not have electricity and get mugged every hour, but it's all worth it to know I can kill a kid whenever I please. My sacred rights as a woman are safe and secure."
It's weird how "women's rights" are all infringements of other people's.
Seriously, the Dobbs case was literally the first notable victory for the American Right in the culture war since the start of the Cold War. Before this they had lost or were clearly losing every single fight - school prayer, abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage, the modern 'queer' degeneracy spinning wildly out of the latter - and Dobbs was the very first time they managed any serious pushback on any of these fronts in 50+ years. (The Kennedy v. Bremerton case on school prayer barely counts in comparison, at that point things were so far gone that SCOTUS had to protect the individual's right to public religious observance rather than school prayer specifically)
It is complete, blackpilled fucking insanity to declare that because of one midterm where the Democrats were inherently favored (look at how many Senate races had Republican defenders compared to the 2018 and 2024 cycles) and the GOP hasn't even necessarily LOST (Nevada & Arizona haven't been called yet, they're projected to take the House and thus break up the governing Dem trifecta at least, and apparently they've won many state & local level races which will be critical to pushing back against the feds), just underperformed expectations, that the Right should now throw its hands up and walk away from that singular major cultural victory. Especially since every single Republican governor who actually passed abortion bans/restrictions won, and won crushingly - I would much sooner blame Mitch McConnell and the establishment withholding resources from Republicans they didn't like for the red wave turning out to be a trickle than Dobbs and the pro-lifers.
Politics is the art of the possible. So sure, it's not practical to push for a Human Life Amendment that bans abortion nationwide with few to no exceptions, because multiple generations have grown up with 50 years of Roe being the law of the land and deprogramming usually takes a good deal of time. Literally nobody important brought that idea up this cycle other than McConnell anyway, and he obviously would prefer to remain in opposition than have to deal with a GOP majority he can't control. They should look to how the first Republicans handled slavery instead.
Fremont & Lincoln didn't stick immediate abolition on their platforms because they knew it'd never attract votes outside of abolitionist bastions like New England. But they still pushed the envelope where they could (Free Soil - banning slavery from the western territories, gradual emancipation in places like NY, etc.), and left it to activists like Harriet Beecher Stowe to shift the culture while more aggressively fighting the (increasingly literal) battles where the atmosphere was favorable to their cause (like Slave Power and its consequences, incl. Dred Scott, and Bleeding Kansas)
So too should the GOP maintain a pro-life-leaning but 'we'll respect state decisions on the matter' stance nationally, pushing abortion as far as practical on the state level (ex. a total ban would be viable in ruby-red South Dakota, but purpler North Carolina requires a more flexible approach in the short to medium term). It's the battles where the Right has more momentum, like tranny bathrooms and drag queen story hour, that should be fought more aggressively in the short to medium run with an eye on eventually shifting the culture in a more conservative direction (ie. by forcing woke teachers out of their positions, undermining teachers' unions, flipping school boards, building on the Kennedy case to move toward the restoration of school prayer, etc.) and making things like the Human Life Amendment possible. Basically, anything but abandoning yet another front on the culture war, and not even half a year after the first big breakthrough there too.
Sure it's going to take a while, but again that's a given due to how long abortion has been legal and the idea that it's some inalienable woman's right has been drilled into the heads of generations by academia. Unless by some miracle zoomers & Millennials become so disgusted with themselves and their culture that we get the same cultural snapback which saw Britain flip from the decadence of the Regency Era to the much stricter morality of the Victorian period or Germany go from the rampant child prostitution and assorted degeneracy of Weimar to electing Literally Hitler and tossing Hirschfeld's scribbles onto the pyre in 10 years anytime soon, the long game is all we've got. It's also how the Left has gotten to this point too, after all, the Democrats of the 1970s were hardly coming out swinging with nine-month and post-birth abortions, drag kids and abolishing whiteness either.
I really want to see this potential future argument from the Left:
"Welfare is reparation to women for having to keep children alive."
What do you mean? They already argue that.
If this ruling was possible now, then it would have been possible after the midterms.
Meanwhile, most babies who would have died before are still dying now. Blue states haven’t missed a beat, and most red states still permit early abortion. At best, we’ve inconvenienced abortionists with a bit of interstate travel.
And all it cost us was the fucking country. In the end, more babies will die. Because we blew an opportunity to seize power and reverse the cultural rot on a federal level.
The reason the right has done nothing but lose for the last 75 years is our inability to grasp the bigger, long term picture. While the left took control of the schools and engaged their long march through the institutions, conservatives retreated to principled individualism of slow and steady defeat.
We could have held off on roe v wade and decimated democrats in the midterms. From there, 2024 becomes a shoe-in. Instead, we took a mostly symbolic victory that directly galvanized our enemy demographics.
You know what’s really funny? For all the shit we give the leftists about their lack of future-time orientation and their emotional incontinence, their movements still have cohesive strategy dictated by powerful central leadership. We crack wise about their rejection of natural hierarchies, and yet they possess the one hierarchy necessary to accomplish their political and cultural goals.
It's weird how "women's rights" are all infringements of other people's.