The challenge now – for women everywhere – is to fight through our fear, and make our courage count
. The new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was speaking for an Australian majority when he described what has happened in the US as “a setback for women and their right to control their own bodies and their lives”.
Why the fear? Because what politicians understand better than anyone is the power of institutional capture. In America, also, most people support abortion rights; 60%,– including majorities in states with the most punitive anti-abortion laws. The exercise of power, even in a democracy, isn’t through a simple force of numbers – it’s about the channelling of the right force of numbers in the right place.
The anti-abortion cause in the US worked out long ago they didn’t need a popular majority to deliver their agenda. They just needed majorities in the places where the decision would be made.