In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, James Taranto had a short op-ed arguing that it would be good for Democrats, and bad for Republicans, if Roe were overturned. Maybe he’s right. But there are two weak points in his analysis. First, he suggests that the official position of the Republican party is to “ban all or most abortions,” and that “[o]pinion polls consistently show that only a small proportion of Americans favor” this “extreme” view. You can certainly find polls in which people say they don’t want to ban all or most abortions. But you can also find many polls in which a majority of people say that they want to ban abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—which is to say, they want to ban almost all abortions. The polls don’t “consistently” show that only a small proportion of Americans favor a general prohibition. Second, Taranto assumes that pro-lifers would be dumber politically than pro-choicers in a post-Roe world. He assumes, that is, that pro-lifers would immediately push for a ban on abortion everywhere rather than, say, a ban on third-trimester abortions that would put Democrats in a corner. (I’ve written about this possibility before, when Stuart Taylor Jr. made the same argument as Taranto.)

Come to think of it, there’s a third flaw in Taranto’s argument. He says that the smartest thing congressional Republicans could do after Roe would be to leave the issue to state legislatures. If the rest of his analysis were correct, however, it would mean that serious political damage would then be done to Republican state legislators and governors. But if the rest of his analysis is unsound, as I think, then it would make a lot of sense to let states address the issue right after Roe went. (Incidentally, I think it’s a very good thing that people, including people who favor legal abortion, are starting to think more about life after Roe.)