The Economist Magazine Cover For 06/01/2024

The Economist Read in browser JUNE 1ST 2024 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image Insert a clear and simple description of the image Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief In America and Asia this week we feature the grassroots movement that could yet decide November’s presidential election. Elsewhere we look at the epic choices facing three women with the future of Europe in their hands. A third of American women aged 15-49 now live in states where abortion is either illegal or impossibly restricted. Some states have passed statutes so severe and vaguely drafted that doctors fear they may be forced to choose between saving a patient’s life and breaking the law. Yet gloomy as this reversal seems, it has also given rise to America’s most dynamic new political movement: a revolt of millions of Americans who think that the government has little business inserting itself into private decisions. We started with images of protest. Dobbs, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v Wade, made getting a legal termination much harder for millions of women. The court, in effect, assigned people more or less choice depending on where they live. But we wanted to focus on politics rather than the law. The protesters against Dobbs carry clipboards and tens of thousands of them have gathered millions of signatures to put abortion rules to state referendums. As many as 16 states could hold abortion votes on the same day that Americans will pick their next president. This is better. Rosie the Riveter represents women who worked in factories in the second world war and has often served as a symbol of economic emancipation. That has not stopped the signature-hunting foot soldiers working against Dobbs from adopting her in their fight for reproductive freedom. The gavel, once again, is wrong—but we thought we could give Rosie something else to wield instead. At a time when America is divided in two, we also have citizens coming together to fight a single cause. The pro-choice movement involves more of them than any such uprising since Black Lives Matter in 2020 or the Tea Party more than a decade ago. This new movement is not made up of keyboard warriors vying for attention online, but of people giving up their weekends and evenings to try to persuade their neighbours of their arguments. It is participatory and local, the kind of thing that Alexis de Tocqueville raved about after visiting the country back in 1831. It is how democracy in America is supposed to work. All that makes the idea behind this cover a good one. Unfortunately, the title betrays its blandness. This is too generic: we could be writing about almost anything. Rosie the Revitalised is much stronger. The placard is faintly ridiculous—carrying something so polite would get a protester nowhere. However, we thought she could hold a ballot paper. And that leads to the effect of Dobbs on the presidential election. Abortion seems likely to help the Biden campaign more than it harms it and in a tight race even a modest boost could be decisive. However, the very same outbreak of sanity that makes the pro-choice agenda so heartening means that Republican voters will be more able to separate their views on abortion from their views on the next president. Joe Biden may welcome some windfall votes from Dobbs, but he cannot be confident that the Supreme Court has saved him. Europe faces Russian aggression, American estrangement and a flood of Chinese exports. Even as it resists the encroachment of the far right, it needs strong leadership. Whether it can pull that off depends on the choices of three women: Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, and Marine Le Pen, the leading French populist. Here they are in two collages—a suitably complex representation of a complex situation. To win the second term she deserves, Mrs von der Leyen must obtain the support of a majority in the European Parliament, which Europeans will elect on June 6th-9th. For this she looks as if she needs the backing of Ms Meloni’s party. However, Ms Le Pen wants to create a mega-group of nationalists that could yank Europe hard to the right. A firebrand with a long history of xenophobia and sucking up to Russia, she needs the Italian right to be bound to her. Which way Ms Meloni jumps will determine the future of the European Union. These drafts combine the blue and yellow of the European flag. Unfortunately, they reminded us of the (different) blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. What’s more, the three women look to be in league, when in reality they are all jockeying for position. We preferred this ABBA-style album cover. Our choice would be for Ms Meloni to break from the far right and join Mrs von der Leyen in the centre. That would hobble Ms Le Pen’s plan and fragment the hard right. Disempowering Ms Le Pen might also diminish her appeal in France, where her party leads the polls ahead of national elections in 2027. European politics has become so fragmented that it is conceivable that no parliamentary majority will be found for Mrs von der Leyen or any other candidate for the commission presidency. As Ukraine fights on and a Trump presidency looms, that would spark a constitutional crisis in Europe at a terrible time. Cover image • View large image (“Meet America’s most dynamic political movement”) • View large image (“The three women who will shape Europe”) Backing stories → The pro-choice movement that could help Joe Biden win (Leader) → The undoing of Roe v Wade has created a mighty political movement (Briefing)