By any reasonable political science theory, any normal supposition about how power works in our republic, this day should not have come.

The pro-life movement has spent half a century trying to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that was presumed to reflect the enlightened consensus of the modern age. It has worked against the public’s status quo bias, which made Roe v. Wade itself popular, even if the country remained conflicted about the underlying issue. Against the near-universal consensus of the media, academic and expert class. Against the desires of politicians who were nominally supportive of its cause, the preferences of substantial portions of American conservatism’s donor class.

Across all those years the pro-life cause also swam against the sociological and religious currents of American life, which have favored social liberalism and secularization. It found little vocal support among Hollywood’s culture-shapers and crusaders for social justice, or the corporate entities that have lately embraced so many progressive causes. It was hampered by the hiddenness of the injustice it opposed, the voicelessness of the constituency on whose behalf it tried to speak.

And it worked against the weight of the American class hierarchy, since pro-life sentiment is stronger among less-educated and lower-income Americans — exactly the wrong constituency to start with, according to cynics and realists alike, if you want to pressure the elite or change the world.