It’s easy to come up with some explanations. Obviously, abortion is an issue that only relates to one gender, at one particular stage in their lives. And it’s never a feel-good option. “I don’t expect the National Football League to be defending abortion rights anytime soon,” said Susan Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute.

There’s also the particular genius of the Arizona State Legislature. A bunch of states have been considering bills like the one that sparked so much outrage in Phoenix. But their sponsors usually talked in vague terms about religious freedom, playing down the part about restricting gay rights. The Arizona lawmakers made it very clear that they were inspired by the terrifying image of a gay couple walking up to a counter and demanding to be served.

“The fight was such a good one because it was such a frontal assault,” said Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood.

When anti-abortion bills come up, they tend to be cloaked as matters of public safety. Make sure the doctors have hospital visiting privileges. Don’t use this drug. Or that one. Let’s have surprise inspections of the abortion clinics. More sonograms and waiting periods.

Voters tended to shrug. But when they are actually asked, straight-out, if they want to ban all abortions, they’ve said no, even in conservative states like Mississippi and South Dakota. And, Susan Cohen of Guttmacher noted, when the Virginia Legislature tried to require women to have invasive transvaginal ultrasounds if they wanted an early-term abortion, it got the public’s unnerved attention. “And other states said — ‘well, maybe we’d better not do that either.’ ”

It’s hard to imagine, but perhaps what this country needs is less subtle state legislators.

The biggest difference between the fortunes of gay rights and abortion rights, however, is that politicians who vote to limit women’s rights to control their own bodies know that, for the most part, they’re only hurting poor people.

Low-income women are five times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as their most affluent sisters. And the lawmakers who busy themselves throwing up barriers to abortion in their own states realize, deep in their hearts, that if their middle-class constituents want to end a pregnancy, they can get on a plane and go where it’s easy to take care of the problem.