The Intensity Gap
At The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh profiles the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List and its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, a devout Catholic focused on winning elections on a platform that seeks to limit abortion. “Dannenfelser’s group is named for the pioneering feminist, and modeled on EMILY’s List, the powerful pro-choice organization, but it has little in common with most feminist groups; its sole aim is to abolish abortion,” Sanneh writes. “For Dannenfelser, there are no moral victories. In order to prevail in the ideological argument over abortion, she must first prevail in the strategic argument about whether the issue can help her candidates at election time.”