“Amy Coney Barrett and the Triumph of Phyllis Schlafly” - New York Magazine:

For all the power the right wing is about to hand her, though, Barrett has indeed chosen a self-limiting ideology, and not just because of her views on Roe. Conservative women aren’t interested solely in abolishing abortion, or in limiting the scope of modern gender equality laws. Schlafly was an anti-communist who belonged to the John Birch Society before she ever campaigned against the ERA. Her anti-feminism comprised one strand of a comprehensively dangerous ideology. The women who serve the Trump administration aren’t much different, and neither is Barrett. A Supreme Court justice with right-wing perspectives on labor, the environment, immigration, and criminal justice can harm women from all backgrounds in all aspects of their lives. That is the intention, and not the accidental byproduct, of constitutional originalism. As embraced by jurists like Barrett and her old boss, Antonin Scalia, originalism is its own dogma; the extension of a political theology committed to an older and more exclusionary version of America.

Barrett understands all that. She’s exactly as intelligent as her advocates say, and she’s made all her choices with a sound mind. Her reward is power. If she’s confirmed by the Senate, she’ll be able to finish what Schlafly once started. She could help lock in Trump for another four years. She’ll be able to deal democracy and yes, the feminist movement the blows the Christian right has dreamed of landing for years.

Feminism shouldn’t be any less ruthless. There are several explanations for the right’s out-maneuvering of the women’s movement. One is the preponderance of a choose-your-choice feminism that had more in common with a branding campaign than it did with real politics. But another is the movement’s reliance on a Democratic Party that has only ever been  intermittently committed to the progress of women. Schlafly and her housewives helped remake the GOP. Feminists must do the same to the party of Joe Biden. No compromise on abortion. No compromise on trans rights. No compromise on matters of economic justice, like a living wage and paid leave. If that sounds too risky, remember the stakes, and something else, too. Public opinion is not on the side of the conservative movement. The future is there for feminists, and the left, to win.