'Utter misreading': Right-leaning columnist admits she was wrong about Roe vs. Wade outcry

"I won’t say this is the wrongest I have ever been," wrote Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, who describes herself as a right-leaning libertarian, on Wednesday.

The writer explained how she'd anticipated politically active factions on either side of the aisle would focus on the elimination of Roe v. Wade — but she had expected everyday citizens wouldn't really care.

She was very, very wrong.

"The end of the year is a time to reflect on one’s mistakes," she wrote, "including, for a columnist, the arguments you got wrong. I am ruminating on my utter misreading of the politics of a post-Roe world."

The writing that caused the self-examination was from May 2022 when she wrote, "“The left is counting on an abortion backlash that may never come."

On Wednesday, she wrote, "Relatedly, I suspect I underestimated how many people were giving pollsters symbolic answers, safe in the knowledge that Roe v. Wade made them moot. In abstract, many people were against abortion in all but the most sympathetic cases. But though they might not have admitted it to themselves, I’d bet that many of them also liked knowing women had the option — if not for themselves, than for their wives, daughters, sisters or girlfriends.

"When politicians threatened to take that option away, they voted pragmatically."

Those being polled about their opinions on the right to choose are frequently asked whether they are "pro-choice or pro-life."

They are rarely asked if they supported a total ban or an elimination of Roe vs. Wade, McArdle wrote.

They are two extremely different questions that require more nuance than a simple "yes" or "no." At the same time, terms like pro-choice or pro-life are political stances that aren't fully understood by the non-political public. People don't understand that being "pro-life" but believing it should be up to the individual means one is pro-choice, she wrote.

McArdle goes on to say that she never fully realized just how horribly legislators wrote the so-called "trigger laws," which would go into place if the Supreme Court struck down Roe.

Columnist Jessica Valenti wrote in 2019, after Alabama banned abortion at conception, that lawmakers were very confused about the specifics of the law.

She cited State Sen. Clyde Chambliss, a Republican, as an example. When he was asked whether there was a carve-out that would protect the victims of incest, he responded: “Yes, until she knows she’s pregnant.”

McArdle claimed that Republicans were caught up in giving pro-choice groups everything they always wanted in a performative way, thinking that Roe would never be overturned.

"The result has been a parade of horrifying stories as doctors refused to provide abortions to a 10-year-old rape victim, and to adult women whose very-much-wanted pregnancies had gone horribly wrong," she wrote.

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In Missouri, a lawmaker explained that as a former law enforcement officer he was aware of two different kinds of "terrible" rape: "date rape" and "consensual rape." The legal understanding of "rape" is that it isn't consensual, but he claimed the point was moot anyway because women who are sexually assaulted can simply take the morning-after pill.

Hospitals in Missouri stopped giving rape survivors the pill out of fear it violated the Missouri law.

Finally, McArdle never fully understood just how inflexible the pro-life movement was. For those who don't fully experience the impact of the groups in red states, it can be easy to assume that their goal is to reduce the number of abortions in the country. Over the past year, it has become clear that the real goal was simply to remove the right to choose.

Now there is a concern about conservative states trying to ban birth control, teaching abstinence-only education, and banning activist groups from passing out condoms.

Read the full column here.