On the first point, I don't necessarily think that all of these women are "controlled by the patriarchy". But it wouldn't shock me that some of them profess to have certain beliefs in public that suddenly go by the wayside once it might affect THEM and people they care about.
Similar to Catholics and birth control. The Church says don't use it. They consider themselves good upstanding members of the church. But when it comes to THEM, they don't want more kids so they do what they want. Like vegetarians who eat cheeseburgers "but only when they're drunk".
I would probably have put it better if I said that they're outwardly pro-life to not ruffle feathers in their communities. It's not that anyone is controlling them, but they have appearances to maintain, right? At church you say you're pro-life. When polled you say you're pro-life. But when you get in the ballot box, you keep that lifeline available in case you or someone you care about needs it.
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Per the male-female divide on the issue, you might be right. I haven't studied it closely (b/c as a man I don't care). However I do think there's one wrinkle you didn't cover. Men can have either opinion on the matter "cost-free" since we don't have a uterus. Women cannot. So it's easier for a man to be pro-life because it isn't his body, and it's also easier for a man to say "I don't care" and be pro-choice because it's not his body. I do think whatever the overall opinions are within the gender divide, that for women it's far more personal of an issue. How that shakes out overall, I don't know. But I think we look at it differently, and I think that MAY affect voting patterns depending on its potential personal impact or lack thereof.
I didn't posit an alternative explanation because it is a complicated mess but we are so deep into this issue now that I feel like I might as well.
Roe was a terrible decision. I don't mean that on policy grounds, I mean it on legal grounds. I don't really have a problem with the policy embraced by Roe (basically it was viability if you read the full decision). What I DO have a problem with is the legal justification. In order to find a "Constitutional Right" to Abortion, the Court started from the due process clause of the 14th amendment, text:
"No State shall . . .deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
Ah, where is Abortion mentioned? Well, it isn't but the justices came up with the idea that the "penumbras and emanations" of this clause created an unenumerated and previously unheard of "right to privacy". Thus did Douglas rule in Griswold vs Connecticut that Connecticut's restrictions on Birth Control violated the US Constitution.
My view of this has always been that if you need to use "penumbras and emanations" to get from the text to your desired ruling, you are reaching. If SCOTUS can find a Constitutional right to an Abortion in the above cited text, then they can make up anything they want and we live in a Judicial Oligarchy rather than a Republic.
Upthread
@847badgerfan referenced that even RBG criticized Roe. Speaking at the University of Chicago in 2013 she stated that the decision "seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change" and that she would have preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts.
Ginsburg's criticism is, in my opinion, spot on. Prior to Roe in 1973, the country had been moving toward permitting Abortion. Between 1967-1973 Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington repealed their Abortion bans and 13 other states liberalized theirs. Ie, momentum was on the side of moving toward permitting Abortion. Also in that era it really wasn't a partisan issue. Catholics and Southerners were still mostly Democrats and they tended to be Pro-Life so there was a significant Pro-Life wing in the Democratic Party and there was also a significant Pro-Choice wing in the Republican Party. The various Legislatures dealt with the question of where to draw the line.
The Roe decision stopped all of that. It imposed a fictitious "Constitutional" Right. Almost immediately, everyone was effectively forced into either the pro-Roe or the Anti-Roe camps. Instead of Legislatures debating the merits of life begins at conception vs 6-week ban vs 15-week ban vs viability vs third trimester, both sides got radicalized because the loudest voices tend to come from the wings and we ended up with two diametrically opposed camps:
- Pro-Lifers for whom birth control is suspect at best and
- Pro-Choicers for whom the holy right to an abortion cannot be infringed until the cord is cut (and maybe even for a few minutes after that).
A second problem that relates to this issue is the fact that most Americans choose not to participate in Primaries. Unfortunately, those who choose not to participate tend to be the moderates so the Democratic Primary Electorate is much more Left Wing than the Democratic Electorate at-large and the Republican Primary Electorate is much more Right Wing than the Republican Electorate at-large. This has enabled hard-line positions on Abortion to effectively become a litmus test in both primaries. For most of the ~50 years of Roe, it was difficult or impossible to win a Republican Primary without embracing the most hard-line Pro-Life position.
I frankly think that a lot of Republican office-holders embraced the hard-line Pro-Life position without really thinking through the implications because they figured that with Roe in place, they would never actually be able to act on the position they claimed so who cares?
Then, when Roe actually was overturned, as you stated, it came as a shock to a lot of people. One group you didn't mention there was Republican State Legislators. I think a lot of them signed on to various Pro-Life group positions as a matter of Electoral necessity and then realized when Dobbs came out that they were in a real pickle.
Republican Legislators were then pressured to enact things like the "heartbeat bills" that criminalize Abortion at six weeks.
I think that the votes (such as in Kansas) have largely been reactions to Republicans simply going too far with their bans. Understand the mechanics here: Pro-Life groups had supported Republicans for decades and when they finally got Dobbs, those groups wanted RESULTS for all their years of toiling in the wilderness. Republican Legislators who are mostly more fearful of a Primary Challenge from their Right than a General Election Challenge from their Left were politically between a rock and a hard place. So a bunch of Republican Legislatures gave the Pro-Life extremists what they wanted and the voters smacked it down.
I think all of this could have been avoided if the Court had taken the position that Abortion simply isn't a Constitutional issue. Then Legislatures would have debated and decided on a line in each state. Some states would have enacted 6-week bans and others would have allowed Abortion up until the cord is cut. I think we'd have arrived at consensus somewhere in the middle with a few exceptions of states far to one side or the other.
