In Leon Trotsky’s famous line, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. The Republicans may not be eager to fight the 2024 election over abortion, but Mr. and Mrs. Obama have made it clear they mean to make that the central point of the campaign to come. Clearly, the Obamas regard abortion as the main ace left to them, apart from former President Donald Trump. And the very reluctance of Republicans to talk about abortion — their evident diffidence, their persisting wish to change the subject — just makes it all the surer that the Democrats will insist they talk about it.
Republicans have clearly become the pro-life party, but politicians most confident in talking about this issue are those in the House, where they’ve been closer to pro-life constituencies. The story has been different with the contenders for the presidential nomination — they have fallen over themselves in trying to get their words in order.
All of this has been more deeply and amply confirmed with the panic shown by the Republicans over the last week with the issue of frozen embryos in Alabama. Some frozen embryos had been inadvertently destroyed, and the Supreme Court in Alabama upheld the claim of the couple who had lost the embryos they had generated in the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF). The embryo was not mere property; it was already the unique, small human being that, when implanted and allowed to grow, would emerge as
