According to a recent poll, 1 in 3 American women has now lost access to abortions following the overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade. More restrictions are set to come in the United States and could possibly have some negative long-term effects. Currently, 21 Million women (roughly) have lost access to abortions in their home states. 14 states in total have been banning all abortions, with varying exemptions and penalties for doctors.

Some of the exceptions are written in a vague manner and with doctors facing the chance of being punished with multiple years in prison for doing even an abortion deemed wrongful, it creates a dynamic where even the narrow grounds for abortion can be challenging to carry out in practice.

There is obvious evidence of a backlash but I actually think it will take a good two years to see the full extent of the backlash and for it to be fully realized. People can still remain ignorant to some degree on the issues caused by the lack of abortion access. They can convince themselves that it doesn’t really matter because they’ll fly to a blue state with abortion access and to which people haven’t been exposed to the horror stories caused by anti-abortion policies.

For some, it is very easy to be unconcerned about anti-abortion positions politicians would take when it felt theoretical and vote for the Republicans anyway. It was also easier to be against abortion when access was more available. I’m not discounting that prior to Dobbs plenty of Republican states had done a lot to make abortion effectively illegal, especially for the poor. The consequences at the time were hidden.

To that, the portion of the Republican party that truly has driven this is not going to rest. They’re going to go for as extreme limitations as they can they will push into new areas where they can meddle in people’s lives. Then add to it, it is getting increasingly difficult to deny climate change is happening. A number of people are going to tie these issues together and wonder what else they’re being lied to about and what else they don’t want to support just to have “lower taxes” or easy access to guns or whatever else is drawing them to vote for the Republican party outside of the craziness recently discovered in the Democratic party.

I’m not claiming there will be a complete collapse of the Republican party in two years but gerrymandering means that anywhere between a 1% to 5% move in the electorate could have large effects on the Republican party in the House and could even swing the purple-red states into being purple-blue states.