By now you have probably heard that South Dakota is trying to ban abortions. They know it is, according to previously established precedent, unconstitutional. Their goal is to have that precedent challenged. Two Bush SCOTUS appointees, I guess, and they're feeling cocky. House Bill 1215, which would ban nearly all abortions in South Dakota, has just passed the state Senate. Now it goes back to the House, which passed an earlier version and must now decide whether to accept changes made by the Senate. Then it will go to the governor, who vetoed a similar abortion bill two years ago, saying he feared it would wipe out existing state restrictions on abortion while a court fight waged.

Oh, and the Supreme Court is busy reviewing Gonzales v. Carhart, the case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit struck down the "Federal Abortion Ban of 2003" (nicknamed, by the pro-side, "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban" to refresh your memory.)

So it seems like somebody out there is trying to prompt the fabled abortion showdown. You know, Roe v. Wade overturned, goes back to the states, etc. Now, I'm disgusted by their actions, because I see all anti-abortion fights waged from the criminalization side as anti-woman and anti-child -- but I don't actually think this will work out for them. I don't think it is what you would call a shrewd move. Because I don't think anti-abortion activists will actually enjoy the outcome of the abortion showdown. Even if they win -- that is, overturn Roe v. Wade -- I think it will turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.

For years, abortion has been the big red perpetually pressable button that Republicans use to win elections with a certain demographic. If they manage to "deliver" on the anti-abortion promise, how will they win the next election? By trying to ban contraception? How well do you think that'll go over with the middle? Mainstream America is conflicted about abortion: a majority favors it remaining legal, but they tend to be uncomfortable with it anyway. This gray area of opinion allows the anti-abortion activists some play. But mainstream America isn't really at all conflicted about contraception. They like having it.

Anti-abortion legislation also doesn't tend to prevent actual abortions. Even now, with abortion technically legal, women in situations where abortions are difficult to acquire still sometimes resort to knitting needles and Drain-o. There were abortions, routinely, before Roe v. Wade. Some of them were legal and safe, some of them were medically safe but of shady legality, some of them were done in Mexico, some of them were done by the 50s back-alley equivalent of Dr. Nick (Hi, half-formed body!). The difference is that, back in the 50s, people didn't know about abortion unless it touched them personally. I suspect that most people with anti-abortion feelings -- not so much the leaders of the movement, but the millions of sincere, misled people who fill out those pro-fetus marches -- really just don't want to hear about it anymore. They want to pretend it's not happening. They seem to have a fairly unexamined belief that overturning Roe v. Wade will magically make abortions stop happening -- or at least, get it out of the news and allow them to pretend it's not happening.

Guess what? That's not going to happen. Abortions won't stop, and coverage of them won't stop either -- it'll just get increasingly ugly. And you might be able to convince yourself you're the good guy when it looks like you're saving the poor little fetus baby on your poster, you know, the human-tadpole thing bathed in a rosy glow and sucking its microscopic alabaster thumb. But when the poor rural teenage girls are bleeding to death in cheap hotel rooms with wire coathangers, will you still be able to think you're the good guy? How about when you find the babies in the dumpsters on prom night? Or when the thirteen-year-old incest victims die of pregnancy-related complications after delivering a premature collection of birth defects?

Believe it or not, the reasons that women have abortions don't go away simply because you make abortions illegal. And as long as you're talking about hypothetical babies, maybe you can imagine that every single unwanted pregnancy is happening to a healthy white woman who will bring a healthy baby to term. You can believe that for each one of those babies there are dozens of sane, comfortably well-off (and, if you're a member of the religious right, non-gay) couples eager to adopt it. And you can be sure that every mother who originally wanted an abortion because she didn't have the material or emotional means to care for a child, will either happily give that baby up for adoption to one of those dozens of ideal parents, or, perhaps, find reserves she didn't think she had, turn her life around, and raise a happy non-criminal productive citizen who at the age of thirty writes a heartwarming article special to the Reader's Digest about how he, and his mother, are glad that she didn't abort him.

But when things don't work out that way -- and they won't -- what are you going to do then?

In a post-Roe world, South Dakota doesn't look so good. It has a high crime rate, a low literacy rate, and a high poverty rate -- all things related to a plethora of unwanted children. It has declining revenue from mainstays like tourism (boycotts) and technology (smart women, and the smart men who love them, move to civilized states).

It's not the promised land. Making abortion illegal will never deliver the promised land. And when it doesn't...I expect backlash. Not only from wishy-washy abortion supporters, but also from remorseful abortion opponents.