I feel like this is a really cynical take for “the issues that dominate the news cycle are ones where there is roughly even political power backing a given position and so small perturbations in territory result in large policy swings.” It became a wedge issue and you’re right politicians are absolutely taking advantage but people do genuinely seem to care a whole heck of a lot about the outcome. I don’t think people are as disinterested as you think. Like literally every woman I know, myself included, is at most 1 Bacon distance from someone who had an abortion.

> it would just be solved

You can’t say “god why are we still taking about this, can’t we just do the_thing_i_want and call it a day?” Because obviously there would be a lot less political strife if we all just agreed or put up with outcomes we don’t like.