Tom_B said:
The assumption that But4 Roe vs Wade ever fetus aborted since then would have been born. ProLife advocates would like to think so--but it is a fallacious assumption
Why
1] Roe vs Wade took the decision out of the hands of the states. But the trend at the state level was for increasingly permisive abortion laws. Some of these laws were quite complicated. For instance abortion would often be permitted if the pregancy was a threat to the health of the mother--and that usually included mental health--so women would go to a psychiatrist and say they were depresssed on account of their pregancy and he would write them the magic piece of paper.
2] Women in states with strict laws bordering states with permissive laws would frequently cross state lines.
3] Just because there is a law doesn't mean it's obeyed 100%. Illegal abortions would continue to be performed.
4] In states with strict laws there is likely to be fewer unwanted pregnancies. This is a two pronged effect--both less sex (sound of social conservatives cheering in the background) and better use of contraception.
My guess is the NoRoe ATL USA would see at most 15% of US OTL abortions resulting in births.
Definite agreement, here. I'm thinking there would be fairly significant knock-off effects, as well. The efforts to reform state abortion laws would remain active for much longer than in OTL, winning some and losing some. The equivalent of the Religious Right in this TL, which got its start in OTL fighting against Roe and against the ERA would here fight against the ERA and against the extension of abortion rights into conservative states.
By about 1980, the ERA would have failed ratification, as it did in OTL, and abortion rights would have begun to fall into very distinctive regional groups: California, northeastern states, Minnesota, and Wisconsin would have very liberal abortion laws. Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and maybe the Pacific Northwest will have restrictions, but still some abortion rights. Most other states will have strict laws, with a few prohibiting it in every case, even to save the life of the mother. The efforts of the pro-choice movement will now be directed more at providing transportation and support for women who want to get abortions where it is illegal than at changing the laws in what they regard as hopelessly backward places. The pro-life movement will have a sense of having "won", in that it has preserved the "morals" of the conservative areas where most pro-life voters live, though a few places like Massachusetts will still be fairly bitter battlegrounds.
This will mean that the Religious Right will be weaker and less motivated than it was in OTL at the time. Without Roe, the RR will have less of a burning issue to unite around, and less reason to feel any special sense of urgency. It will still exist, and will be as vocal on issues like Gay rights and the media as it was, but it will be smaller, more narrowly focused, and less visible.
This will probably not be enough to keep Reagan out of office in 1980, unless we somehow butterfly the economy and Iran into different shapes. So, Reagan gets in. He is, however, less committed to a Religious Right that looks more quixotic than formidable. In all likelihood, Reagan will try to get national anti-abortion legislation passed, and it will fail in a Democratic Congress. This won't be nearly enough to derail his popularity, or his political machine, nor will it give Mondale a better campaign, so he wins in 1984, though the result is not the shocking landslide of OTL.
In 1988, things really begin to change. By now, the Religious Right has had eight years of Reagan, and still has nothing like the focus provided by Roe. If Pat Robertson even runs, he is even more of a joke than in OTL, and his campaign ends early. George HW Bush coasts to the Republican nomination. Meanwhile, Dukakis still gets the Democratic nod. Here, however, the campaign begins to diverge seriously. The Religious Right were tireless organizers in 1988, and formed a solid voting bloc than helped Bush win in November. In TTL, Bush doesn't have these advantages. The Religious Right's performance is lacklustre, which not only deprives Bush of a key voting bloc but also gives him fewer volunteers and less money. This puts him on much more even terms with Dukakis than in OTL. With lass campaign cash, the Willie Horton ad may never be made, assuming that the sampaign worker who came up with the idea is even on the ATL Bush campaign. Dukakis is still an uninspired campaigner, but so is Bush. At the end of the day, Dukakis coasts to a narrow victory.
Dukakis isn't the best President, nor the worst. He provides competent, colorless, and technocratic leadership in the First Gulf War, which is about what Bush provided OTL, except that Bush did have better one liners. In any case, the outcome is the same, and so is the Bush recession, though here it is called the Dukakis recession. Dukakis doesn't have quite the deficit problems that Bush did, but his are bad enough. He also never said "read my lips", and this may help him some. In the end, however, the victory in the 1992 election is going to go to the best campaigner. I'm not sure who will get the Republican nod, but whoever it is will have a very good shot. Dukakis just isn't a good enough politician for it to be otherwise.
No matter who wins, however, one thing will be glaringly apparent. The Religous Right is dead. There is no Christian Coalition, no Operation Rescue. The Republicans are pretty much the party of deregulation and corporate power. The Democrats are more or less as in OTL, but more flexible, because less threatened. Politics in the '90s will be less partisan, more freewheeling, more individualistic and independent than in OTL. The culture will be even more excessive and decadent, though still pretty recognizable. By the 2000 elections, however, the political situation will be unrecognizable.