You can choose your metaphor for the bind the Republican Party has created for itself on the issue of abortion. The most popular (since it seems to be the most fitting) is that they are the dog who finally caught the car and now don't know what to do with it. Or maybe they've painted themselves into a corner and are now trapped on a shrinking piece of political real estate. But I'm going to start this off with a different one: Republicans riding down a very slippery slope on a toboggan.

Roe v. Wade was the law of the land for a half century. The anti-abortion movement worked diligently for decades to overturn it. They attacked in in various ways: filing court cases designed to be "test cases" for the Supreme Court to hear, to give them an opportunity to either overturn Roe or at least weaken it dramatically. They passed ever-more-restrictive state laws putting some rather outrageous limits and conditions for women seeking abortions. And they pushed for the most conservative anti-abortion judges to be named, so these could work their way up to eventual Supreme Court seats. That last one was the most effective, obviously, but it took decades to achieve (the effort really started in a big way during the 1980s, but they didn't get their majority on the court until very recently).

But finally they achieved their ultimate goal, and Roe was overturned. In many states, strict abortion laws were already on the books (some from over 100 years ago), and in others "trigger laws" had been put in place since the 1980s. These laws would only go into effect if-and-when Roe was overturned. I might add a fourth item to that list, because it took beefing up Republican strength in state governments to achieve this. Getting more and more Republican politicians to hew strictly to the anti-abortion line was a big part of how things changed.

But the dog never really thought through what would happen when it did catch the car. Post-Roe, everything was supposed to somehow just work itself out. Red states would ban abortion, and then once Republicans achieved the trifecta of controlling the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office they could pass a nationwide ban, and that'd be the end of the political issue forever. The anti-abortion forces would reign triumphant.

Things haven't quite worked out the way they planned.

Red states have been caught in what I would call a "purity spiral" (or maybe a "doom loop" works better) on abortion laws. They are trying to outdo each other on how extreme each state's laws will be. The prime example of this currently is Florida. Just last year they passed a 15-week abortion ban -- which not so long ago was seen as sufficiently extreme even by most anti-abortion activists. Senator Lindsey Graham even proposed a nationwide law (after Roe was overturned) that had a 15-week limit. But the governor of Florida wants to run for president. So the state senate just passed a 6-week ban on abortion, and the lower legislative house is considering the bill. The governor appears eager to sign it, to burnish his anti-abortion bona fides before he starts his presidential run.

That's the purity spiral in action. When the first Florida law was passed, that was considered a strong enough position. Now, the bar is being moved back to six weeks. But they haven't reached the bottom of this purity spiral, since some places are contemplating "zero-week" laws which would convey legal "personhood" from the moment a sperm cell enters an egg. A single cell will have all the legal rights as an actual person, meaning that any abortion would have to essentially be treated as murder. Only that is the position that cannot be purified further, obviously.

The problem for Republicans is that none of this is very popular. And the more extreme it gets, the less popular it is. Before Roe fell, everything was theoretical. For the anti-abortion side, it didn't really matter how harsh their restrictions because they knew the Supreme Court would only let them get away with so much. So they could pass more and more extreme bills safe in the knowledge that they'd never actually become law -- and people would never actually have to live with that reality. As for the pro-choice side of the issue, the concept of Roe being overturned was considered far-fetched, with an increasingly-small chance that it'd ever actually happen as more and more time went by. The pro-choice side became complacent in thinking: "Well, we can use this to scare voters during elections, but it'll probably never happen in reality."

For both sides, the Dobbs decision suddenly made everything real. This was no longer hypothetical. It was no longer academic to debate what limits the public really wanted to see on abortion. All of a sudden it affected millions of women's lives, in a very direct way.

Since Dobbs, the Republicans have overreached time and time again, and the public is starting to react very strongly at the ballot box. Currently, they are trying to use a conservative judge to follow the same course as they've been attempting all along -- send a test case through the federal system and hope the Supreme Court further erodes any access to abortion nationwide.

The reaction to this shift from theoretical to actual, from the pro-choice side, has been to say: "See? We told you so! We told you this is what they wanted to do -- and they won't stop until they do so nationwide." The reaction to this shift on what now (pretty accurately) is being called the "forced birth" side is either further demands for purity or absolute silence.

Sooner or later, the Republican Party is going to have to come up with an actual stance on the issue. Right now, there just isn't one, other than: "I'd rather not talk about it." And it seems even some of the forced-birth groups are beginning to realize that this purity spiral is going to lead downwards to political rejection. The New York Times took a look at this today. The article starts off with a good overview of the problem:

Republican leaders have followed an emboldened base of conservative activists into what increasingly looks like a political cul-de-sac on the issue of abortion -- a tightly confined absolutist position that has limited their options ahead of the 2024 election season, even as some in the party push for moderation.

Last year's Supreme Court decision overturning a woman's constitutionally protected right to an abortion was supposed to send the issue of abortion access to the states, where local politicians were supposed to have the best sense of the electorate's views. But the decision on Friday by a conservative judge in Texas, invalidating the Food and Drug Administration's 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, showed the push for nationwide restrictions on abortion has continued since the high court's nullification of Roe v. Wade.

Days earlier, abortion was the central theme in a liberal judge's landslide victory for a contested and pivotal seat on the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Some Republicans are warning that the uncompromising position of their party's activist base could be leading them over an electoral cliff next year.

"If we can show that we care just a little bit, that we have some compassion, we can show the country our policies are reasonable, but because we keep going down these rabbit holes of extremism, we're just going to keep losing," said Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who has repeatedly called for more flexibility on first-term abortions and exceptions for rape, incest and the life and health of the mother. "I'm beside myself that I'm the only person who takes this stance."

That's a new and even better metaphor: "rabbit holes of extremism." And she's right. But it may be impossible to prevent, at this point. As I said, neither side of this issue was really adequately prepared for the post-Roe world we now live in. But some Republicans are getting a lot more worried that what their party has been doing is not going to bring them future success:

Last year, John P. Feehery, a former Republican leadership aide in the House, urged his party to find a defensible position on abortion that included flexibility on abortion pills, allowed early pregnancies to be terminated and detailed a coherent position on exceptions for rape, incest and health concerns. He said on Monday that he was repeatedly told abortion would be a state-level issue and federal candidates should just stay quiet.

"They didn't want to do the hard work on abortion," he said, blaming "a lack of leadership" in the party that still has the Republican position muddled.

The article closed with a rather astounding quote. The sentiment itself isn't astounding, but rather the person who was quoted saying it:

Voices for compromise are beginning to bubble up, in some cases from surprising sources. Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, one of the country's largest anti-abortion groups, said on Monday that even she was "somewhat concerned" that the Republican Party might be getting ahead of the voters on abortion. Her organization has drafted model legislation to ban abortion at the state level in every case but when the life of the mother is in grave danger. But, Ms. Tobias said, that legislation comes with language to extend those exceptions to the "hard cases," pregnancies that result from rape or incest, or that might harm a mother's health.

"We've always known the American public does not support abortion for all nine months of a pregnancy," she said. "They want some limits. We are trying to find those limits."

The only problem is that the extremists, as always, are the loudest voices in the party. They have been, all the way back to the 1980s. But these days nothing is theoretical. It's all very real. And the more they go down this rabbit hole of extremism, the more the Republican Party is going to see droves of young voters and women of all ages and men sympathetic to the cause turn out to the polls in staggering numbers. Because America does not want a race to the most extreme position on abortion laws. No matter how much some Republicans seem to think that's the easy path to victory.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant