But other countries do have protests and riots for a lot less. I think the reason it doesn't happen in America is mostly because of the lack of organized unions and stuff like that.
Where I live if some law suggested doctors could be facing jail time for providing care to someone who had a miscarriage, it wouldn't take a week for doctors to go on strike, which would probably be organized by their union. And even anti-choice doctors would strike too.
I only started remembering which side west is (relative to north) when I started thinking of "the wild west" and then thinking of where the wild west was. Still can't use it in the real world for anything though. At most if I'm at my own town I know approximately where north is, but anywhere else I'll quickly lose the sense of which direction is which.