The Supreme Court seems ready to put a dumb law out of its misery and kick the issue back to state legislatures, which, barring a constitutional amendment, have the right to ban abortion or not under the 10th Amendment. If the Court does in fact decide this (it still isn't official) I will support it.
Now what? What game does each side play to secure their vision of human rights in America?
The anti-abortion side has been open about their intentions: get the problem thrown back to the states and use their grass-roots networks to fight the battles in the state legislatures, and some, perhaps most, would like to use this experience and momentum to get Congress to someday pass national laws.
What about the pro-death side?
Well, they have already leaked the document to cause unrest, likely with the goal of intimidating a justice or two.
The Democrats are threatening to end the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court. That could happen some day but it is currently unrealistic: the Democrats don't have the votes to do this now and they almost certainly won't have the votes after the fall.
The problem with court packing is that it removes whatever shreds of credibility the court may have left. At that point there is no reason why the Republicans can't also pack the Court. After two rounds of court packing, states and the other organs of government will probably start ignoring the courts all together. Of itself, delegitimizing the court will not secure abortion.
Deciding the abortion issue through the courts was a way to take the question out of the hands of the voters. This approach lasted 49 years but it eventually failed because the Constitution simply does not bear that interpretation. How do they remove the question from both the voters and the Constitution? How do they create a permanent, self-selecting ruling class that is impervious to both popular opinion and the Anglo-American legal tradition? How do they re-imagine American government and foist the new regime on a divided populace?
In the context of re-imagining American government delegitimization makes a lot of sense: once all the institutions are delegitimized the populace will either fall into total apathy or revolution will break out. Progressives both love the idea of an apathetic populace and they are intrinsically incapable of imagining themselves losing a revolution.
Personally I am anticipating another summer of riots and another fall of Covid hysteria, because it worked so well in 2020. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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