Will abortion rights galvanise the American left?

Sometimes, defeat is just what a party, or a movement, needs. Hard lessons are learnt, uncomfortable realities are acknowledged and the group in question emerges more serious, more competitive, more potent a political force.

In recent years, liberals and conservatives have often failed to learn the right lessons from their losses because they won’t accept defeat in the first place. From crackpot theories about Cambridge Analytica swinging 2016 for Trump to the idea that 2020 was stolen by Joe Biden four years later, both sides of America’s political divide have opted for comforting fictions over hard truths.

But the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents unambiguous victory for the conservative movement and impossible to ignore defeat for progressive America. The imposition via trigger law of strict abortion bans in states immediately after the decision is just one of the ways which the decision and its very real consequences will hit home — and perhaps force the left to reckon with defeat.