To say that the Kamala Harris campaign bet heavily on the issue of abortion rights tilting the election is understatement. Recall that she pledged to end the Senate filibuster rule specifically to pass a national right to abortion. “We should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio in September. Democrats did the same, both up and down the ballot; spending, according to AdImpact, $570 million on abortion-related television advertising in federal races, compared to $37 million by Republicans. The extra expenditure did not lead to their retaking the House, despite it being the focus of such blue state campaigns as that of Mondaire Jones in New York (trounced by incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler) and Susan Altman in New Jersey (held off by incumbent Tom Kean Jr.).

Explanations for this tend to focus on abortion being overshadowed by economic issues or immigration. But there may be a broader lesson to be drawn: As the furor surrounding overturning Roe fades, so, too, may abortion be disappearing as a national voting issue. The decision to return it to the states, as Donald Trump would say—he’s not wrong to say, “return;” pre-Roe, abortion was already legal in New York and California—looks to be taking the air out of the issue. New York passed a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right, while a range of red states, including Kansas and Ohio, have held off restrictions, even as Florida has not. “Voters enshrined broad protections for the procedure across seven states, including Arizona, Montana and deep-red Missouri, but that enthusiasm failed to translate into broader Democratic wins,” the Wall Street Journal reported after the election.

It’s a trend with an instructive precedent—the post-Prohibition issue of legalizing alcoholic beverages. As with abortion, what had been for decades among the most polarizing issues in the country—urban vs. rural, Protestant vs. Catholic—simply disappeared from national politics. That’s not only because the 21st amendment overturned the 18th (which had installed Prohibition) but because the issue, like abortion, had, in fact, been returned to the states.

As with Roe, Prohibition installed a blanket national policy—pushed for decades by “temperance” advocates led by a powerful lobby group (the Anti-Saloon League)—that replaced what had been a state decision and local decision. (See Dan Okrent’s authoritative and engaging account of temperance politics in his popular history, Last Call.) New York City—but not all of the state—was “wet,” while Methodist rural Ohio was “dry.” Al Smith being both from a wet state and a Catholic helped to doom his 1928 presidential campaign. 

Franklin Roosevelt ran on a “repeal” agenda, to overturn Prohibition. Even as he condemned drunkenness, in a famous Sea Girt, New Jersey speech, he denounced “the methods adopted since the World War with the purpose of achieving greater temperance by the forcing of Prohibition have been (a) complete and tragic failure.” As with Roe, one size fits all had endured such that the issue would not go away.

But once Prohibition—installed by no less than a constitutional amendment!—was repealed, that’s exactly what happened. New York could once again be wet, while Utah remained dry. A truce had been declared in that era’s culture war. In 1904, the Prohibition Party candidate for president received some 260,000 votes and in 1936, just 54,000. Nonetheless, “dry” jurisdictions continued to exist across the US, with 33 states providing a local option on the issue today. There remain seven dry counties in liberal Illinois, birthplace of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and eight dry towns in New York State, while all Mississippi counties are “wet” unless voted otherwise.

It seems likely that the abortion issue will follow a similar trajectory, perhaps with state laws becoming increasingly permissive over time (as per the Kansas precedent). Just as important is the likelihood that, as with the issue of “demon rum” post-Prohibition, the issue will simply no longer play the central role in American politics that it has since Roe. For those “pro-Life” voters who consider abortion to be murder, or for those “pro-choice” who believe its availability to be a human right, this will be disappointing. But for those who understand American federalism to be a wellspring for compromise and comity, the prospect that abortion will fade as an issue is good news.