Legal Abortion Is Not a Polarizing Issue

It’s not even all that controversial, not anymore.

It has become an axiom of political and sociological thought that we are a divided country. Blue states, red states, 50–50, two sides that absolutely cannot understand what the other side could possibly be thinking — we can’t come together on anything. It is my experience, walking around the earth (rather than staring at social media or watching cable news all day), that this is not the case. There are people with whom I fundamentally disagree on some issues that I completely agree with on others. There are people I am mostly aligned with politically who are assholes; there are people on the opposite sides of every issue from me that are truly kind, good-hearted people. This is not a difficult concept to understand for any human except those overly invested in social media, an institution that seems specifically designed to dehumanize anyone who doesn’t share your precise life experience. Life is a rich pageant, and every person is complicated. Nothing is split down the middle. Nothing, and no one, is purely good, or purely bad. If you find someone who claims they are, they are pretending. They are lying to themselves.

But this sense that our country is somehow 50–50 persists, particularly among those so entrenched in their own all-or-nothing mindsets that accepting…