Pro-life austerity: good luck with that

Waiting on a Republican family policy agenda? Don’t hold your breath

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is the author of "The Perils of 'Privilege.'" She has a newsletter, Close-reading the reruns, and is co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast.

In the New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat reminds us that the Court overturning Roe v. Wade did not make abortion illegal in the United States, but merely opened up the legal possibility of states doing so: “While the pro-life movement has won the right to legislate against abortion, it has not yet proven that it can do so in a way that can command durable majority support.”

Douthat warns against a post-Roe landscape that’s pro-life for fetuses but not babies or their mothers:

You can imagine a future in which anti-abortion laws are permanently linked to a punitive and stingy politics, in which women in difficulties can face police scrutiny for a suspicious miscarriage but receive little in the way of prenatal guidance or postnatal support.

For Douthat, this outcome would be a problem. For those who would prefer for…