WHEN THEY TELL YOU HOW THEY'RE PLANNING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS, BELIEVE THEM

In all likelihood, we're about to enter a post-Roe v. Wade future. In that future, many people seem to assume that abortion will be banned in much of the country but remain widely available in deep-blue states. That will probably be the case as long as Democrats hold the White House, but as an item from Alexandra DeSanctis at National Review's Corner makes clear, the right won't be content with that.

Over at Public Discourse, Josh Craddock has an interesting essay on what pro-life lawmakers in Congress might consider doing if the Supreme Court overturns Roe and Casey in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization this term.... From his essay:

... legislators should introduce strong anti-abortion legislation that recognizes the personhood of the unborn, strips federal courts of jurisdiction over the statute, and empowers individuals to enforce it through a private right of action. And if such strong medicine is too politically impracticable, pro-life legislators should at the very least tax abortion providers and abortion-pill manufacturers as a mechanism for promoting a pro-life social policy.

I’m especially intrigued by his proposal that Congress use its taxing power to cripple the abortion industry.... The proposal to use taxing power in the meantime is a smart one: “Just as Congress’s taxing power has been used to all-but prohibit automatic firearms and to effectively require individuals to purchase health insurance, a special ‘sin tax’ on abortion providers and abortion-pill manufacturers (perhaps $2,500 for each abortion performed or pill prescribed) could—consistent with Supreme Court precedent—regulate individual behavior and cripple the abortion industry.”

Craddock is not messing around:

Congress should enforce the constitutional guarantees of due process of law and equal protection of the laws for unborn children nationwide, barring states from giving effect to permissive abortion laws. Such legislation could provide, for example, that no state or person acting under state law (or in interstate commerce, as an alternative basis) may discriminate on the basis of whether a human being has been born. The law should specifically apply to any state prohibition against homicide, and require that any person who commits an abortion shall be subject to the same or comparable penalties as exist under state law for other homicide cases.

I've been told that the upcoming Supreme Court decision will make abortion policy a state matter. DeSanctis and Craddock don't believe that's necessarily the case. And given the fact that Republicans might control both houses of Congress and the White House starting in 2025 -- perhaps with a filibuster-proof Senate majority, if David Shor's gloomiest projections come true -- we need to take the possibility of an effective nationwide ban on abortion very, very seriously.

They're telling us what they want to do. We should believe them.