How did that work out?
Photo via Orange County Archives. (CC BY 2.0)
A wise Vulcan once said, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
Now that conservatives have won their half-century fight to undo Roe v. Wade, will the old saying hold true?
Remember when conservatives passed a constitutional amendment to ban alcoholic beverages?
How did that work out?
Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, thinks it may be time to review the religiously driven temperance movement’s half-century-plus fight to pass the 18th Amendment (New York Times):
Since the middle of the 19th century, prohibitionists had pressed, in a variety of ways, to ban the “liquor traffic,” which they cursed for debauching men who neglected or abused their wives and children. Women knelt in prayer before taverns to shame their owners to shut down. Every year, thousands of Protestant churches observed Anti-Saloon Sunday, when donations were collected, and petitions were signed for the cause.
Dry factions bloomed in both major parties, although Republicans were more solidly united behind the idea than Democrats. By the time Congress passed the 18th Amendment, Prohibition was the law in nearly half the states; 17 had done the deed by popular vote.
Yet the vigor of enforcement seldom matched the movement’s crusading fervor. Kansas passed a dry law in 1880, but illegal saloons known as “blind pigs” operated rather freely in the cities of the state. When the temperance activist Carry A. Nation took to raiding such places, hatchet in hand, she was seeking to embarrass government officials for shirking their duties; they sent her to jail for destroying private property.
Already the unintended consequences of Dobbs are emerging.
Putting women and doctors in jail for violating abortion bans may not in practice seem so pleasing as wanting it happen. And devoting more enforcement resources to the task at a time conservatives wring their hands over personal feedom, decry the Deep State, and demand on tougher action on violent crime, may be a tough sell. So it was with banning alcohol.
Nation may have led a movement, but average Americans viewed prohibition as an infringement on personal liberty, says Kazin.
Of course, the political challenge of stopping abortions will differ from the challenge of abolishing the traffic in alcohol. State, not federal, authorities are in charge now, and they may face less of a backlash from constituents, many of whom have long sympathized with the anti-abortion cause. And it would most likely be more perilous to operate a safe underground clinic than it was to run a speakeasy in places where most people considered saloons a permanent, if sometimes regrettable, feature of urban culture.
Yet, in some ways, the anti-abortion movement after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is actually weaker than was its moralist precursor when Prohibition became the law of the land. Nearly 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the Dobbs decision. And while many conservative Christians of all denominations think abortion is sinful, they no longer command public opinion as did evangelicals a little over a century ago. In addition, the two major parties are now firmly planted on opposite sides of the issue, whereas Prohibition had bipartisan support. And young women, vital foot soldiers in the bygone dry army, now overwhelmingly oppose the judicial and legislative effort to police their wombs.
Kazin’s emphasis on Dobbs’ lack of popular support overlooks that there is likely a craving among religious zealots and fans of authoritarian strongmen for an anti-abortion Stasi. Think of owning the libs as their fascist gateway drug. They won’t stop there.
But Kazin believes “indecent and unenforceable assaults on individual freedom” in the name of policing wombs will evoke a stronger reaction among a larger group of Americans than the anti-abortion army has members.
Americans will rebel, Kazin predicts. What he’s not predicting is how soon and in what form Dobbs will go the way of the 18th Amendment.
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