I got to thinking to myself, what would happen if Alito confirmed and installed upon the bench joins a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade? Immediately state legislatures would have to act and decide what their statutes on abortion would read. Women in many parts of the country would be denied the ability to seek safe abortions by medical professionals, and we’d return of course to underground and unsanitary medical practices, or perhaps secret doctors making house calls only to be exposed in what one would assume would be the many witch hunts to follow.

Then that particularly crass and calculating side of me kicks into gear. Is Roe being overturned really in the best interests of the conservative movement? Abortion, and now to a certain degree gay bashing are the tools of the right wing to hold in the religious right and bring them out election after election. But what happens if they get what they want? Do the religious stay at home in greater numbers thinking that their war has been won? If Roe is overturned then activists must then turn their attention to the states, why waste their time on federal elections that will have little affect?

I’d argue that for the conservative movement, at least the component of which includes the electoral support of a religious entity who they frequently ignored in past administrations–Bush is of course the exception–that winning the “war against the baby killers” would be the worst thing to happen. Immediately they would lose a major magnet to attract these voters, after all Supreme Court precedent doesn’t change over night, not even in an election. Without Roe states decide, and so it seems logical to me that these activists, the Robertsons of the world, would turn their wrath to such renegade states like New Jersey and California who continue this murderous campaign outlawed by our Supreme Court, blessed of course by God.

Yet, then would come the outrage from the majority of Americans who support the right to choose. The preceding elections would almost assuredly be windfalls for Democrats. Without even saying it or campaigning for it they would gain a monstrous share of the women’s vote and urban and women voters would come out in record numbers as never before, probably handing majorities to the Democratic party for their long and brave support for a woman’s right to choose. It could usher in a premature realignment, one that may not take hold, but one that would almost assuredly give the Democrats a chance to reshape Washington and with justices growing older perhaps the court with younger justices who will assuredly benefit from advances in modern medicine to live longer and healthier lives.

Now of course all of this is to suggest that the plight of women in states that would outlaw abortion would be an acceptable casualty in our fight. This of course I would not subscribe to and would not encourage. However, there does remain the question, are republicans really dumb enough to overturn Roe, or do they realize that Roe is their major calling card to reach the religious right they so depended on in 2004.