Epstein and Kobylka argue that other justices probably could never have been persuaded, offering another opportunity to consider their distinction between legal argument and political conviction. They note that Rehnquist and White were always opposed to abortion, and they call this a choice determined by ideology not law. Such an approach downplays the significance of legal argument for such a person and the factors they mention make little of legal doctrine. But the justice who wrote the majority opinion in ROE was a man. There are no significant differences of opinion on abortion by gender among the general public.
Political beliefs ought to be taken to have reasons.
In turn, given the openness of legal argument in the United States, those reasons can probably be part of or translated into legal argument. If one wishes to argue that legal argument is a significant factor in decisionmaking, there is no reason to say it only matters for swing justices such as O'Connor. Instead, one can take the legal arguments as mattering to justices such as Scalia as well. Second, like Rehnquist, Scalia has been committed to federalism and has a perspective on constitutional construction that is skeptical of fundamental rights. These are outlines of what an account of Scalia's jurisprudence would look like.