I know the title of this post seems crazy given that, not even a year ago, the pro-life movement scored their biggest legal victory ever: Dobbs v Jackson Whole Women’s Health, the case which overturned Roe v Wade (1973), which established a legal right to abortion. States now have the right to legislate prohibitions on abortion, whether they are outright bans or term-limits more in line with most of Europe. Both of these types of laws would have been struck down under the regime established by Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey (the successor case to Roe in 1992, which was itself also overturned by Dobbs).
But by at least two measures, the pro-life movement has lost the momentum it had in the months since June 2022, and things do not look like they are getting any better. Let’s look at these measures one at a time:
The first measure is election results. Since the crowning legal victory 8 months ago, the pro-life movement has suffered an endless string of political defeats. Take the special elections which took place following the decision, which all saw pro-life Republicans in Nebraska, New York, and Minnesota underperform, winning by single digits in seats which voted for Trump by double digits. Alaska’s House seat, which voted for Trump by 10 points, flipped to the Democrats, despite having two pro-life Republicans on the ballot.
One can make the argument that some of these Republicans had other flaws (Sarah Palin was one of the candidates in the Alaska race). But in another election in New York, Marc Molinaro, another pro-life Republican, was touted as the ideal candidate to flip a Biden+2 seat in the Hudson Valley, which doesn’t always agree with the policies of the mega city to the south. And yet, he famously fell short, resulting in the Democrat Pat Ryan holding the seat with a slightly larger margin than Biden.
The midterms were not much better. Pro-life candidates lost races they were thought to be competitive or favored in. These included the Wisconsin governor race, the Arizona governor race, the US Senate races in Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and several House elections in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia. Sure, many of these candidates had their own problems, and some pro-life candidates did very well, such as Mike DeWine in Ohio and Brian Kemp in Georgia. But the pattern can’t all be explained by poor candidate quality.
It was not just candidates. Every single pro-life ballot measure in 2022 went down to defeat at the hands of the voters. Even in a supposedly pro-life state like Kentucky, a constitutional amendment establishing no right to abortion was defeated. The same happened in Kansas, and by a very large margin. In Montana, a very uncontroversial measure requiring care for children who survive abortion was also voted down.
But no state was more emblematic of this rejection of pro-life rejection than Michigan. The Republicans put up several pro-life candidates for statewide office, and there was a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, intended to prevent the state’s 1931 abortion ban from ever coming into effect. Not only did the measure pass by double digits, but Republicans were swept out of office, failing to flip either the governor, attorney-general, or Secretary of State offices, and they even lost control of the legislature, giving Democrats a trifecta, and with it, the ability to pass abortion rights legislation in a swing state, for the first time in 40 years.
Worse yet, there are more potential defeats still to come. This April, liberals have a shot a flipping control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which could then set aside the state’s total ban from the 19th century, possibly in favor of a 1984 law allowing abortion until 22 weeks. The conservatives can still win this race and preserve their court majority, but it will be a real fight, and if the pro-choice side is as energized as they were in the midterms, the odds of a pro-life victory look grim.
When Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, legalizing abortion across the country, it was hailed as the crowning victory for abortion rights. But this legal victory was followed by a nearly endless string of defeats for them. Not even 4 years after the ruling, Congress voted to restrict funding of abortion to cases when the woman’s life was in danger (later broadened to include rape and incest). Dubbed the Hyde Amendment, it has been passed in every budget since and recent attempts to do away with it were thwarted by none other than Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, the last remaining pro-life Democrat in the Senate (Henry Cuellar of Texas is the last remaining pro-life Democrat in the House). Many states in the years following passed parental notification and consent requirements for minors, mandatory waiting periods of up to 24 hours, and informed consent laws requiring women to be informed of the risks of, and alternatives to, abortion. These laws even included restrictions on abortions after the point of viability, when the child could exist outside the mother.
All of these policies helped to chip away at access to abortion and reduced the number of abortions that were being performed. But they were made possible because pro-life candidates were able to get elected to office time and time again on the wave of backlash to the Roe v Wade decision. The Dobbs decision threatens to completely reverse that dynamic. Almost all of the evidence suggests the wind is now at the backs of abortion rights supporters, and in states where they are in power, even more extreme laws will get passed. New York used to restrict abortion after 24 weeks, but that law was effectively neutered in 2019 when Democrats got their first trifecta in the Empire State, and perhaps that provides a preview of what might happen in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia in the coming months and years (and lest we forget, Georgia and Arizona are trending blue and could see these policies in a few years as well).
But election results are only one part of the story. To be sure, the pro-life movement will insist that election defeats are worth it for doing the right thing on the abortion issue, and there is some truth to that. So tomorrow, let’s look at the second measure, and this one appears to be more damning: the pro-life movement is retreating inwards, making no effort to expand their coalition or pursue policies which would reduce the need for abortions.