US politics suffered a seismic shock on June 24 when the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 court decision on Roe v Wade, which established obtaining abortion on request as a basic right for women.
Even in the continuously eventful world of US politics, which keeps much of the world enraptured like soap opera audiences, this overturning was a huge surprise. It was a surprise because until a couple of months ago, almost no political observer anticipated or predicted the overturning to occur so soon.
The overturning was unexpected because structural and institutional factors of politics seem very much against it. There is a solid majority of citizens who oppose the overturning; the Republicans are focused on winning the coming Midterms and 2024 presidential election, and this decision seemingly can only hurt prospects of winning those elections.
All the Republican leaders, including President Trump and Senate Leader Mitch McConell, adamantly proclaimed until a few weeks ago that they were against the overturning. All the new Supreme Court justices recently confirmed by the Republican-held Senate, proclaimed that they regard Roe v Wade as settled law of the land.
It is clear now that they blatantly lied about their true intentions.
However, it is not clear that the Republicans will pay any electoral price for these lies and the drastic curtailment of rights of women. People consider a lot of factors when they pull the levers of vote or desist from voting.
Political identity, bread and butter economic issues, law and order, general direction of the country, are just a few of the most critical factors that influence voting behaviour. Right now, a lot of these factors are working directly against Democrats and in favour of Republicans. Therefore, the Supreme Court decision may not affect the coming elections at all.
Mainly, two theories are getting bounced around among the US political commentators as explanations of how this momentous but unexpected shift came to pass.
According to the first theory, overturning of Roe is a prime example of the effectiveness of long-term, methodical, and relentless political organizing. Overturing Roe v Wade and banning of legal abortion have been prime goals of US religious conservatives ever since the original verdict of 1973. Religious groups have been focused on the issue like a homing missile for decades among all the political turns and twists of different administrations.
They knew that the broader public opinion is not hospitable to overturning Roe and that’s why, rather than focusing on politicians beholden to votes, the political groups focused on changing the judiciary by placing one conservative judge after another in important places at state and federal level.
Church groups, political lobbies, think-tanks, law societies, all worked in tandem for that goal, even though these groups comprised only a minority, although very powerful, within the Republican coalition.
The second theory argues that overturning of Roe v Wade mostly shows the contingent and arbitrary nature of politics. One can trace a direct chain of unexpected events that led to this outcome.
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Very few people expected Trump to get elected in 2016. If Hillary had won, the Supreme court would now have 6 liberal judges rather than 6 conservative ones. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s selfish and bizarre decision of not retiring during the Obama administration’s first term when she was a cancer patient of nearly 80 years of age resulted in a complete upset of the court balance -- one that might hold for a long time to come.
Without these contingent events, Roe v Wade would have been secure now as an imperturbable rock despite all religious conservative political organizing.
I think that both theories are complementary to each other and help explain the unexpected shifts. Doggedly-organized politics focused on single and narrow issues prepare the ground for change that can come through surprising events.
When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked about the greatest challenge for a statesman, he replied: “Events, dear boy, events.” In politics, events eventually happen, totally unexpected events that seismically alter all existing political calculus and open opportunities for the prepared and the bold.
Political groups that have gradually gained strength by staying on a focused path are usually much better in reaping the whirlwind than groups that continuously aim for the sky and try to change everything, everywhere, all at once.
It is not just the religious conservatives who have had success with decades of organized, focused politics. Liberals and progressives in the West had such successful groups also, for example Greenpeace and anti-nuclear power groups, and civil liberty groups like ACLU.
However, progressive groups have become significantly less effective in recent years as they have become too preoccupied with identity issues and broad andvague objectives of total societal change. Single-minded focus in organized politics is something that liberals need to relearn from social conservatives.
Bangladesh’s politics also has examples of successful organized politics focused on narrow, single issues. In my view, the civic movement to bring collaborators of 1971 War to justice, is a great example of such politics. This movement stayed on the narrow focus for decades through political ups and downs. Even Awami league, the party that eventually used government power to realize that vision, had many twists and turns with this issue. The party leaders themselves often collaborated with accused war criminals in the past decades due to political need of the moment. And many people can persuasively argue that the War Crimes Tribunal and post-Shahbag hangings were more examples of Amami League’s utilization of opportunities for aggrandizing power rather than becoming persuaded by the civic movement. However, events happened and an objective that few people thought possible just one and half decades ago, became accomplished. The Hefazat-Qwami movement to obtain full national accreditation for the Madrassa education tiers and becoming, in effect, the significant alternative to national public education system, can be seen as another example of focused politics.
Shafiqur Rahman is a political scientist.
