How gerrymandering paved the way for the US's anti-abortion movement

Public opinion polls in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and elsewhere have all found that a majority of citizens in those places prefer to keep abortion legal. Yet Republican-controlled legislatures in each of those states have, in the past three months, passed laws that would outlaw abortion in most cases.

The customary reward in a democracy for violating the will of voters is ejection from office. But the legislators in question do not seem particularly worried about a comeuppance in the 2020 election, judging by the extremist quality of their legislating.

The legislators realize what a lot of voters still do not: in many places in the US today, the voters don’t choose the politicians. The politicians choose the voters.

Thanks to gerrymandering, by which political insiders draw