At the time it was handed down, the nation’s editorial pages generally condemned the United States Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Taking the responsibility for setting abortion policy out of the hands of lawyers, special interest groups, and judges and returning it to voters and state legislators was deemed undemocratic.

Ironically, what was undemocratic was what has been in place since Roe v. Wade, with the judicial branch allowed to substitute its judgment on an essentially political matter better left to legislators. Overturning Roe allows for a meaningful debate once again among the people regarding what the appropriate limits on abortion – if any – should be.

The polling data collected since Roe show consistently that only about a fifth of the American people supports one or the two extreme positions. Slightly more people favor a total ban on abortion (save for instances where the life of the mother is endangered) than back abortion with no restrictions whatsoever up through the end of a pregnancy.

The views held by most of us, however, fall somewhere in between. Before Dobbs, activists on both sides of the debate were boxed in by high court pronouncements in the Roe, Webster, and Casey decisions. Most anything outside that was rendered functionally meaningless.

The extremism is once again evident. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ recent linkage of abortion to fighting inflation, for example, during an interview on MSNBC while campaigning for governor shows this starkly.

“Right now, we are walking away so often from the real issues that people care about. Abortion is an economic issue. It’s been reduced to this idea of a culture war. But for women,” she said, “This is very much a question of whether they’re going to end up in poverty in the next five years because women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies end up within poverty.”

Her opinion is popular among those who argue abortion empowers women, leading to their economic and social success. Those same people should step outside the box and acquaint themselves with Support After Abortion’s new study examining the effect of abortion on women who had them.

The study shows that mental health resources are far more helpful to women after abortion than political rhetoric, something that should serve as a guide for both sides of the debate going forward.

Using open-ended questions and a Census-driven sample demographic, the study’s authors found a “negative self-image” resulted for 34% of women who underwent an abortion using pharmaceutical methods. Nearly two-thirds either sought help or said they could have used someone to talk to following the procedure even though, as most of them admitted, things went largely as planned.

Some find it necessary to shout their approval for abortion, including their own, perhaps in pursuit of justification and to ease their psychological pain. Most women, however, want to remain anonymous when it comes to their emotional struggles, even among the 75% of them who identified as pro-choice.

Up to now, hardcore supporters of abortion rights have made it difficult for those who experience regret, shame, or other negative psychological and emotional outcomes to make their feelings known. They fear it would diminish the public’s enthusiasm for the practice because “women’s empowerment” is now the primary justification for aborting unborn children.

What Dobbs has done is free policymakers to consider the full impact of abortions – not just on the unborn child, but on the parents. Abortion advocates are not as vocal on the need to fund mental health assistance useful to women and men who need healing from traumas they experience before, during, and after abortion as they are about the procedure itself.

The Dobbs decision gives us the chance to revisit what abortion means and how to address it. We should take advantage of this opportunity to prove that American democracy gets it right far more often than judicial diktats. The phrase “people are policy” is true for government leaders and everyday people.

Babies deserve far more protection than they get. Abortion advocates need to stop dismissing the real harm done to mothers who have experienced abortion.

Peter Roff is a media fellow at the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network, a former columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and senior political writer for United Press International. Contact Roff at RoffColumns@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.