I don’t know how the Texas abortion law will shake out. I want to be honest about that. Truthfully, it seems like an unnecessary diversion from the main act, which is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, due next year, which can be reasonably predicted to eviscerate Roe and Casey.

So if the standard regimen we’ve been living under for decades is only months away from death-by-Alito, why is Texas acting all crazy now and creating abortion bounty hunters?

Scott Lemieux argues that the Republicans will pay a price for this effrontery but that it might not be a very consequential price. On the one hand, he says, “if abortion clinics close and people are getting bankrupted for giving their neighbors phone numbers [for abortion providers], people are going to notice.” On the other hand, due to gerrymandering and non-competitive states and districts, most Republicans are entirely free from political peril unless they deviate to the left. People can get as mad as they want about the country going off a right-wing cliff, but there’s not a damn thing that can be done about it.

I see this differently. I think the Republicans are upsetting the status quo on abortion in ways that are not popular. It’s true they get away with doing a lot of things that aren’t popular. Counterintuitively, they’re frequently rewarded. But this is different in the same way that enacting civil rights legislation in the 1960s was different. It will change how people vote. It will cause new people to pay more attention. And it will change the balance of energy on social issues, not just abortion.

Maybe “realignment” is too strong of a word, but it will definitely reorder the existing boundaries of political affiliations, and it will change the issues each party uses to gain an enthusiasm advantage.

One thing is certain. Women will not rest until they get the rights they’ve lost restored. Reproductive rights aren’t going to be one item among others, like tax rates and discriminating against gays.

Will it be difficult to get those rights back? Yeah, it will be absurdly difficult thanks to factors like gerrymandering and the extremely conservative Supreme Court.  But while it will harder to reverse these changes than it should be, that doesn’t mean the GOP won’t be put on the defensive in a big way.

Conservative control of the GOP is stronger than ever and growing, so they’re not going to moderate. Instead, their anti-Democratic actions will become more central and urgent as they desperately try to prevent any consequences for their radicalism. Fear of demographic change started this trend, but pissing of the more populous gender is going to add rocket fuel.

Can women really be allowed to vote? Not if it means the GOP has to soften its positions.

So, this is more a symptom of a preexisting disease than the disease itself. This fight will be long and ugly precisely because the GOP is committed to not paying a consequential price. But they will eventually lose. Either that, or we become Gilead.