The proof of the existence of this bargain is the way people talk about prospective trades: Would you give up this for that? Would you take that kind of tax in exchange for this? Better outcomes in a pandemic in exchange for South Korean-style geolocation tracking? More abortion restrictions in exchange for a European-style safety net? Those kinds of trades also suggest how fragile and uneasy is the contract between citizen and state, an equation that citizens might want to change sometimes, or an equation at risk of being changed without our explicit consent.
But the table feels like it’s tilting like that in the 21st century, the bargain rebalancing in unpredictable ways, even when unwanted by the public. What followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last summer serves as one data point in this larger reconsideration. On a technical level, the question of abortion was referred back to the states. But the manner of the changes to American law — discordant, confusing, sudden — has scrambled expectations for how remote and consistent the U.S. government should be.
Acts that were legal 12 months ago no longer are in certain states. Governors who sign laws that reverse older laws sometimes stay quiet; Republican presidential candidates remain vague about what policy should look like. People in Kansas voted down a constitutional amendment that would say there was no right to abortion, and people in Michigan voted to put abortion rights in their Constitution, so lawmakers in Ohio are trying to change their constitutional amendment process.
Absent a full abortion ban, doctors, pharmacists and hospitals shy away from certain procedures in the event they might be considered illegal, throwing people in complex circumstances into hazy suspense. Occasionally, in grim stories about rare pregnancy complications, people express the concern that, actually, they cannot get in the car and drive elsewhere to secure an abortion in a state where it’s legal. “The thing that scared us [was] we didn’t know if we’d go to jail. We didn’t know if we’d be fined,” a Florida woman told CNN. There aren’t laws against interstate travel for adults looking to secure an abortion, not in Florida, but something’s changed when that hesitation enters the equation.
Discomfort with abortion itself doesn’t rule out discomfort with a lightning rearrangement of expectations, either. The government is suddenly in a place, or threatening to be in a place, where many people did not expect it to be, intervening in what were recently private decisions, cutting in on an unpredictable basis. “Every single woman [who] has been in a relationship has experienced the ‘being late’ moment,” an Arizona Republican strategist told Politico last year. “Every woman can relate to that, but it’s an intangible that’s hard to explain to men.” That story detailed a Republican-led focus group with women voters in Arizona after the midterms. “It’s about control,” offered one independent voter. A Republican participant said, “If they are demanding control here, where does it end?”