Before you send me a mailbomb or drop an envelope laced with risin my way, hear me out. I am strongly in support of the right to choose. Shit, our president is the living argument that some births should be abandoned.

But it’s time for the Left to be aware of tidal shifts, including this last, desperate jag to the right that will see the reversal of  Roe v. Wade. And we should welcome it. Not for the actions it will take. But for the actions we will.

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7 – 2 that the ability to terminate a pregnancy was a constitutional right. I’m old enough to remember a time when politicians thought it unthinkable that the legality would ever come into question.

Now, less than five decades later, with a number of lower-court abortion decisions advancing and the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s, abortion opponents are close to getting what they have wanted ever since Roe v. Wade: the decision’s reversal.

And let’s be honest: RvW‘s death will come any moment now.

Consider:

• This week, Trump vowed to stand with anti-abortion activists as he became the first sitting president to speak at the March for Life, an annual gathering that is one of the movement’s highest profile and most symbolic events.
• More than 200 Republican members of Congress  asked the Supreme Court last week to consider overturning Roe v. Wade, in a brief urging the justices to uphold a Louisiana law that severely restricts access to the procedure.
• As of 2014, five states had only only abortion provider, making access for minorities and the impoverished nearly impossible in Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

As a political issue, abortion isn’t technically dead. But the life support machine barely beeps. Currently, there are more than 20 cases in line at the Supreme Court that could fundamentally alter abortion rights as enshrined in Roe. And some are tired of waiting: Last week, Texas’ 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the country, appeared to try to force the Supreme Court to take up abortion rights next term by refusing to issue a decision on an abortion-related lawsuit until the Supreme Court resolved a different abortion case.

Given the inevitability of a reversal, why delay it? In fact, why not let loose the hounds of outrage as soon as possible? At its most reductive, the abortion issue is a matter of timing. Do we want to rail against a jerry-rigged system before the November elections, or after them?

Because nothing has jolted us awake yet. Somehow, we have yet to admit that we’ve got metastasizing political cancer. We’ve brushed by nuclear war; glossed over our ecological war crimes; even accepted Russians as valid political actors among the electorates. All while being spoon-fed Tweeted reassurances that the blood in our stool is nothing to worry about.

But if Roe v. Wade’s fate really comes before the Supreme Court, then for the first time in decades, the abortion rights movement will understand that the threat it is facing is not theoretical, and supporters will stop fighting like it is. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the decision will finally force the ideological zeal typical of a political opposition—the force that has long powered the anti-abortion movement — onto an abortion rights movement. And liberal complacency on the issue of abortion could end for good.

These are all pie-in-the-sky forecasts. But there’s a reason to invite adversity. Women showed what a galvanizing force they can be when they brought the #MeToo movement to state houses nationwide. The Blue Wave in 2018 came primarily thanks to women and minorities who said, en masse, enough.

Time for a similar mindset come November. While the process of choosing a Democratic presidential candidate still has months to go,  the race has yet to establish a Young (or Old) Turk who can scrap with Donnie Dimwit. Trump was borne of reality TV, so out-dancing him in the Minstrel Show of American Politics is no small ask.

We need something bigger. Like a cause.

You did it with #MeeToo. You did it in 2018.

Do it again. Take it from us.