Two years after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the pro-life movement has made major advances now that the people and legislatures are finally free to protect life. Yet, like every human rights movement in our nation’s history, this monumental victory did not signal the end of our mission—it just gave it a new beginning.
The path ahead has challenges and threats and we cannot afford to rest until babies and mothers all across America are safe.
First, the great news: 24 states have laws protecting unborn children at 15 weeks or earlier—20 of them when a baby’s heartbeat can be detected. As of May, that includes Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act. Together these laws protect 200,902 unborn children annually, an increase from last year.
Importantly, states are pairing strong protections with additional support for moms and families. This year, 14 states passed new laws to strengthen the pro-life safety net, including funding for pregnancy centers, child-care assistance and extending Medicaid for postpartum moms.
These laws make all the difference in the world to women like Neesha, who credits heartbeat protections in her home state of Georgia with saving her son. A single mother of four who had undergone abortions before, Neesha’s first impulse when she became pregnant again was to call an abortion center. But Georgia limits abortion when an unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected, which prompted her to find another way. Her search led to an adoption agency that stood with her every step of the way, including when she lost her job. Today, she has an open adoption and a loving relationship with her little boy and the family she got to hand-pick to raise him.
These stories of life and love are real, but are rarely treated as newsworthy. Every gain for life is more precious considering the hostile media establishment that is largely content to recirculate abortion-lobby talking points. After two years, the falsehood persists that pro-life laws somehow prevent doctors from caring for women experiencing miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or life-threatening pregnancy complications, despite being debunked for every state and refuted with unambiguous guidance from a growing number of “Med Ed” policies.
There is still plenty of work to do to address the real, complex needs that drive women toward abortion. Governors and other leaders in the states, along with projects like Her PLAN’s Help Them Both campaign, are doing heroic work on this front—yet the issue is bigger than any individual state.
With more than half of abortions today induced using drugs, the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Biden’s mail-order abortion-drug policy to continue is a disappointing setback. Even the Food and Drug Administration acknowledges these drugs send one in 25 women to the hospital. But many blue states shield abortionists who break the laws of other states, shipping drugs where they aren’t licensed—even to minors without their parents knowing.
Planned Parenthood now boasts of distributing these high-risk drugs via app, “completely free of face-to-face interaction with a clinician.” If an abuser or trafficker is on the other end, no one is really checking. This fight is not over—attorneys general in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri are seeking to take up the challenge based on harms suffered by women in their states.
In as many as seven states, pro-life advocates must defend against constitutional amendments—bankrolled by the radical Left—that threaten nearly 55,000 lives annually if they all pass. With pro-abortion lawyers crafting language that hides their true scope, it is crucial to educate voters on how these amendments would enshrine abortion throughout pregnancy, strip parents of their rights and gut women’s health and safety.
Addressing these ongoing challenges will take both state-level and national leadership. It will include passing legislation like the SAVE Moms and Babies Act, sponsored by Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi and Republican Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, to stop the rollback of safety standards on dangerous abortion drugs. And it should include a minimum national standard to stop late-term abortions at least by the point when babies can feel pain, which polls consistently show about seven in ten Americans support.
The United States should be a human rights leader, not aligning its policies with countries like China and Vietnam that have no federal protections for unborn children at any point.
None of this will happen if President Joe Biden is reelected and Democrats take complete control in Washington this November.
Worse, it could be the last time we celebrate the life-saving impact of Dobbs and everything the pro-life movement spent 50 years working to achieve. Congressional Democrats are constantly scheming to shoehorn abortion into every facet of our government and undermine pro-life protections—from turning veterans’ hospitals into abortion outposts to suing states to force emergency room doctors to carry out abortions. Democrat senators have introduced legislation to shut down pregnancy resource centers that provided nearly $370 million in mostly free goods and services for women, children and families in 2022. And Biden’s weaponized Justice Department is busy throwing peaceful pro-life advocates in jail while scores of attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life groups go unprosecuted.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi vows Democrats will use the “nuclear option” and scrap the Senate’s 60-vote rule to impose abortion on demand over Republican opposition. Belying their protests that they simply want to bring back Roe v. Wade, the Democrats’ signature bill, the deceptively named Women’s Health Protection Act, would go even further to ban pro-life protections and force late-term abortion on demand for any reason on every state nationwide. When they promise an all-out assault on the unborn and on any alternative to abortion, we must take them seriously.
Lest the situation sound hopeless, there is a known antidote to pro-abortion extremism. Three things are needed for pro-life candidates to beat the Democrats’ millions in advertising dollars. They must go on offense and expose the Democrats’ inability to name any limits on abortion they support; they must couple that with compassionate safety net policies for women and children, like those proposed by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Katie Britt of Alabama ; and they must put enough money into their message to be heard on the airwaves.
When they do this, battleground-state message testing shows candidates can shift their net support by 9.2%. At SBA Pro-Life America we are doing our part, investing $92 million to reach 10 million voters across eight battleground states that will determine control of Congress and the White House. They just have to overcome the consultant-class advice of ignoring the abortion issue, because it is not going away.
There has never been a more promising—or more perilous—moment for the pro-life movement in America than this election year. But with courage, determination and a winning strategy, we can and will give life the fighting chance it deserves.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Follow her on X @marjorieSBA.
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