Right-wing victories are just the beginning. A victim-blaming narrative is meant to quiet the left.

On Monday, June 27, just three days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization extinguished the constitutional right to abortion, a doctor in Ohio came face to face with the harsh reality of the new legal regime. He had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Under Ohio law, there can be no abortions after six weeks. The doctor scrambled to find a colleague in neighboring Indiana, where laws are only slightly less restrictive, who could help the patient.

Heartbreaking cases like this will now be an everyday reality in the U.S. Libby Emmons, editor-in-chief of the right-wing website The Post Millennial, was quick to place blame for the horrifying situation: Apparently, the pro-choice movement was the real culprit. Emmons wrote, “If only the pro-choice movement had focused on upholding ‘safe, legal and rare’ instead of advocating for abortion on demand and ‘shout your abortion’ there would have been enough mercy so that a 10-year-old didn’t have to carry a rapist’s baby to term.”

Blaming those who resist patriarchy for bad outcomes is a classic tactic of abusers to control their victims. “Don’t make me hit you,” an abuser might say. More and more, this is what we hear from the political right.

With a Supreme Court dominated by six Republican appointees, the right has an unprecedented stranglehold on power. It is using this dominance of the courts to rewire the legal system on issues ranging from gun control and environmental policy to police power and church/state relations.

But rather than enjoying their judicial triumph, many conservative pundits have adopted victim blaming, arguing that the left has brought their defeats on themselves, and that any bad consequences come from resistance to the right’s agenda.

What’s behind the logic? Partially, it’s that Dobbs and other recent court decisions are indefensible. They are already producing vile real-world results. Victim blaming is a way of deflecting responsibility.

Beyond shifting blame, victim blaming is also about defeating future resistance. The right knows it’s gone too far and is provoking what might be a massive counter-movement.

There are plenty of middle-of-the-road voters who are nominally pro-choice but don’t want to do the messy work of protesting that will be needed: picketing outside the homes of judges, civil disobedience, an underground railroad in anti-choice states.

There is no way to restore abortion rights without the kind of major social disruption that is the hallmark of all civil rights movements. To change the world, you have to shake the powers that be. This prospect makes the right angry – and centrists uncomfortable. Which is why the right has fully embraced victim blaming, while centrists are being courted to be their enablers.

JEET HEER is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written for publications including The New Yorker and The New Republic.