Kevin Williamson wants his tale of righteous martyrdom to be Shakespearean but it doesn't get past trite and amusing. He made his living as one more ranting provocateur among so very many such noisemakers working for the Right. Remarkably he managed to get a gig outside that echo chamber when against all common sense, The Atlantic hired him so they could get a little "balance" to offset the reality-favoring bias of the rest of their journalists.
Williamson didn't last long enough to set up his desk accessories because he has a long-documented record of theatrical hatred of people who favor a woman's right to get an abortion. They canned him for that, once they decided to do some overdue due-diligence.
Now he's back among his own. From the safe rooms at The Wall Street Journal, Williamson wants to talk this over, see. He’s the victim of a mob! He was misinterpreted! He wants you to understand that when he said that women ought to be "hanged" for having an abortion, and that anybody who is complicit in that capital crime ought to be punished, that he was just raising the subject for discussion. He didn't mean "hanged" as in "killed by a judicial authority under the law"; he meant sort of killed, or maybe sort of cast out, or just punished somehow--no car for a week, young lady! And Kevin wants you to know that it's worth talking about because abortion is either murder or it's not, see? If it is, he's right; he's a true brave warrior for the unborn and you're a murdering scumbag whose baby-killing ought to be illegal. If it's not murder, well then, it ought to be, so he's right. He's a true brave warrior for the unborn. And you're a murdering scumbag who kills babies legally.
It's an easy gig, really, but offstage Kevin has a couple of problems if you take him seriously for a millisecond.
One, it's not murder when legally, scientifically, geographically, and customarily, women in America have a right to choose and to exercise that right without asking Kevin what he thinks. Kevin insists that those people aren't "ready to talk candidly about the reality of abortion", "the reality" being that Kevin is self-evidently right about it and they don't have the moral character to agree "candidly" with him. This is a tough idea to raise for discussion fifty years after Roe, when the ruling has been discussed and upheld candidly and repeatedly, when the technology and pharmacology of detecting and managing pregnancy has advanced rapidly, when women insist on controlling their own destinies, lives, careers, health, and families. In an nutshell, Kevin's problem is that he's living in the societal, scientific, vocational, and legal version of America circa 2018 whether or not he's candid enough with himself to concede that. We can discuss it all he likes. It’s still 2018.
Two, Kevin needs cash flow, and in his universe of Baskin-Robbins Conservatism with 3100 flavors of the same thing to choose from, that means branding. His little foray out of the Absolutist Ward of the right wing media asylum was a serious branding error, a New Coke-level mistake that discredited him with his own tribe and put him in a spotlight where he was seen by everyone, not just the usual three or four dozen people who read National Review. On that bigger stage he had to account for, for example, the details regarding why hanging was appropriate for women who had abortions: “if the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence. Let’s not pretend like we’re doing something else.”
That sort of vindictive venom thrills Conservatives who read your work for joyous hate, but in the adult world, where a position taken firmly requires support of reason more than venom, you can't just casually fling feces. You have to explain—details, please--how organized slaughter of the guilty would work, how they'd be judged, where they'd be held, what appeals they might have, etc. It has to be more than just fun, and so Williamson was out of his depth when that need was clear. It wasn’t just the offensiveness of his position that made him look absurd; it was how puerile, simplistic, and silly it was. And remarkably, Kevin Williamson fancies himself a hard-nosed realist when he suggests implicitly, absent details, setting up, paying for, and administering millions of trials, incarcerations, and punishments up to and including executions, and then insists that the rest of us stop pretending.
Which says all you need to know about the likes of Williamson and the issue of abortion: it's over. They know it. They can be fatalistic, flippant, and irresponsible about it because the issue is finished. John Roberts would be insane to let his Court get near it, but if Roe v. Wade ever comes again to the Supreme Court, it'll be either reaffirmed or not. If it's upheld, the Right has yet another failure on its hands. If they repeal, it'll be like Prohibition all over again. Repealing Roe will not prohibit abortion. However, it will create the biggest black market the nation has ever seen. The casualties of bad procedures will be national news. Safe abortions and abortifacients will be publicized and pursued in every state; unsafe ones will send countless women to emergency rooms and to their deaths. The colossal impracticability of prohibiting abortion will be obvious from the first day, and the American people will instantly divide themselves into the same three camps that Prohibition engendered: Pros, Cons, and Hypocrites.
The details, Kevin. Get into the details for five minutes and the obvious stands in plain view: upheld or repealed, the outcome of questioning Roe is inevitable: failure.
Let’s not pretend like they’re doing something else: Williamson and his fervent audience need Roe to stay where it is because their brand is the gleefully frustrated self-righteousness of the Lost Cause. If they get what they say they want they instantly become irrelevant at best, and at worst, scapegoats for the bloodshed. That won't happen. They can trivialize their issues and feign passion and gravitas because they know it’s all just an act.
Williamson insists that he's a victim of the "Twitter Mob". Townhall calls his self-pity bit "devastating and unsparing”, leaving out who or what exactly is devastated and unspared (but it was “dishonest or ignorant partisans”—“braying jackals”! Braying I say! Jackals!); so it seems that Williamson's story arc has landed him back where he can make a living raging superficially, colorfully, and lucratively at the Right's endless Open Mic night, and never need to be more than a stand-up comic they like. Commentators like Williamson aren’t about policy, or governing, or details; Kevin wasn’t attacking abortion any more than George Carlin’s “Football versus baseball” routine was attacking the NFL. It’s entertainment. It’s about fun hating. Liberals suck, am i right? They’re braying jackals, aren’t they? Aren’t they? Yeah! Hey, you’ve been a great audience. Both of you. Try the veal and tip your waitress.