Michael Wear says that both sides in the abortion debate are trying to rub their opponents’ faces in their powerlessness. “Abortion politics in 2019 is a morality play about what happens when one side has all the political power, yet feels culturally embattled.” That’s why Andrew Cuomo lit the Empire State Building pink to celebrate the enactment of an abortion law well to the left of public opinion, and why Alabama’s lieutenant governor trampled the opposition’s procedural rights to secure passage of a law well to the right of public opinion.


There is obviously something to the case Wear is making. But it’s overdrawn — we have a largely nationalized culture, and I don’t think the idea that pro-lifers in Alabama and pro-choicers in New York are comparably culturally embattled can withstand much thought — and it overlooks something crucial. The truth is that opponents of abortion in Alabama don’t really have the same degree of power as its supporters in New York. The Alabama law is probably going to get struck down in court, while there is no prospect that the New York law will be. One side of this debate centralized power over policy in the Supreme Court several decades ago, with no serious constitutional warrant. That asymmetry structures all of our abortion politics.