Dobbs: The Ongoing Battle For Life
Tomorrow is June 24th. Does that mean anything to you? If it doesn’t, I humbly suggest that it should! And hopefully after reading this column, you will never again forget the importance of June 24th.
Just as January 22nd is a date of immense significance to the pro-life movement, so too is June 24th. The first is the date that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing (imposing) abortion in the United States, and leading to the deaths of untold millions of preborn children.
June 24th, on the other hand, is the date that this egregious wrong was righted! This is the date on which, three years ago, the High Court ruled in the Dobbs decision that Roe had indeed been wrongly decided. Fifty years after the pro-life movement began fighting to overturn Roe, this glorious day finally came about.
Since that day, the killing of a preborn child is no longer recognized as a “right” supposedly enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Of course, it was always obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that the U.S. Constitution couldn’t possibly include the “right” to abortion. The very idea would have been abhorrent to the framers of the Constitution, and for the U.S. Supreme Court to discover this “right” within that document was one of the most heinous instances of judicial malpractice in the history of our nation.
The Battle is Not Over
As I have so often reminded our readers over the past three years, however, the overturning of Roe is in no way the end of the fight against abortion and its mindset. In many respects, it is only the very beginning.
It is true that the Dobbs decision had significant and far-reaching practical effects. As of a year ago, 42 abortion facilities had shut down in states in which abortion became partially or totally illegal following Dobbs. While it is likely that more have shut down in the past year, there doesn’t seem to be current numbers available.
Unfortunately, however, this has not yet translated into a lower abortion rate in the U.S. In fact, abortion rates seem to have continued to rise since Dobbs. According to the most recent data released by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a total of 1,038,100 abortions were committed in 2024. That marks a slight increase (about 1%) over 2023.
The idea that the number of abortions is rising after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe might seem counter intuitive. However, once you understand the complex dynamics of abortion politics, as well as the determination and wealth of the pro-abortion movement, it quickly makes sense.
A Developing Strategy
Consider this statement by an employee for the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. “Despite the Dobbs decision overturning the federal right to abortion in June 2022, Guttmacher data continue to show an increase in the number of clinician-provided abortions as compared to 2020,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher Institute data scientist and Monthly Abortion Provision Study project lead.
“While these data cannot capture the obstacles that many abortion seekers faced or those who were unable to access care, the findings do underscore the determination and dedication of abortion patients, providers, advocates and support organizations.”
“Determination and dedication” indeed! The reality is that the pro-abortion movement had long recognized that there might come a day when Roe would be overturned. After all, it was an incredibly flimsy decision. And besides, the pro-life movement simply wouldn’t let the issue rest. It was only a matter of time before conservatives gained a majority and overturned the decision. And so, the pro-aborts had prepared for it. Their strategy in response was two-fold.
Firstly, for years they been heavily promoting so-called “medical abortions,” which use pills to abort the preborn child early in pregnancy. It is far easier for women to access these abortion pills than to go into a facility and undergo a surgical abortion. Indeed, there are providers who openly seek to get abortion pills even to women in states where abortion is legal. In some cases, this is as easy as putting in an order online, and having the lethal drugs show up at your door a day or two later. The more “medical abortions” occur, the less pro-life laws even matter.
And secondly, the abortion movement had been preparing to help women in crossing state lines to obtain abortions. In many cases, it is a matter of a short drive for a woman to leave a restrictive state, to find an abortion facility in a neighboring state. Various pro-abortion organizations have collected tens of millions of dollars to assist women in doing just that.
As the Guttmacher Institute reports, around 155,000 women crossed state lines to have their preborn children aborted in 2024. While this is a slight decrease over 2023, it is still a very large number.
Pro-life Laws at Work
The fact that the number of abortions in the U.S. increased again last year is certainly discouraging. However, we must be careful to recognize that this is in no way proof that pro-life laws don’t work. In fact, as the Guttmacher Institute report points out, the reality is that the number of abortions has fallen precipitously in states where abortion is now illegal. In other words, pro-life laws do prevent abortions in states where they are in effect.
However, the extremely patchwork situation of abortion laws across the U.S. means that it is often all too easy to simply have an abortion done in a neighboring state. What this means, is that we need to up our game in getting pro-life laws passed in more states!
While the Guttmacher Institute notes that 41 states have some form of an abortion ban in place, in reality many of these only ban abortion in extremely limited cases. Only seven states ban abortions before 18 weeks gestation. That is a shocking statistic when you consider that a preborn child at 18 weeks gestation is a human baby by anybody’s measure: on an ultrasound it can be seen moving around, sucking its thumb, and has recognizable features.
The fact that only seven states ban abortions before that point is an indication of just how extreme abortion law is in the United States. Even many otherwise extremely “liberal” nations in Europe ban abortion well before 18 weeks!
However, in those states that have meaningful abortion laws, abortions have dropped…significantly. As pro-life researcher Dr. Michael New notes over at National Review,
“[I]n May 2024, Florida began enforcing a heartbeat act that protect preborn children after six weeks’ gestation. Between 2023 and 2024 the number of abortions performed in Florida fell by more than 12,000, a 14 percent decrease. Similarly, South Carolina began enforcing a heartbeat Act in May 2023. Between 2023 and 2024 the number of abortions in South Carolina fell by 36 percent, the largest percentage decline in the United States.”
Saving Lives in Victorious Battles
A thirty-six percent drop is a big deal! It should give strong impetus to pro-life advocates everywhere to step up their efforts to pass pro-life laws in their states.
This is precisely the message that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops gave, in a message celebrating the anniversary of the Dobbs decision. “I urge all Catholics to engage their elected officials on all issues that threaten the gift of human life, in particular the threat of abortion,” said Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
“The Dobbs decision not only gave states the freedom to protect preborn children but also paved the way for pro-life victories nationally. The federal government is now closer than ever to defunding Planned Parenthood and other organizations whose abortion profiteering harms women and babies,” Bishop Thomas said.
He continued:
At the same time, we know that several states have enacted extreme pro-abortion policies, overriding existing pro-life safeguards, with some states leaving children vulnerable to abortion even up to birth. Despite the good that Dobbs decision accomplished, the battle for life is far from over.
Pro-life Sentiment Grows
Another piece of good news is that it seems that there has been an increase in pro-life sentiment in the U.S. in recent years. As Dr. Michael New points out, this increase in pro-life sentiment seems to be especially marked within the younger demographic, which is a real beacon of hope for the future.
According to the recent Gallup poll, the percentage of young adults ages 18 to 29 who thought “abortion should be legal in all circumstances” fell from 54 percent to 44 percent — a ten percentage point drop!
“When one compares the results of the 2025 Gallup poll to the 2023 Gallup poll, the pro-life gains among young adults are even more impressive,” notes Dr. New. “Between 2023 and 2025, the percentage of young adults who identified as ‘pro-life’ increased by eight percentage points. Furthermore, the percentage of young adults who thought ‘abortion should be legal in all circumstances’ fell by a whopping 14 percentage points.”
Liberal Panic Over Birth Rates
In concluding this article, I thought it worth highlighting a bizarre paradox that is emerging within the public discourse over abortion.
On the one hand, even many extremely liberal organizations are beginning to recognize that the world is facing a very serious demographic crisis. In many industrialized nations, the birth rates have fallen far below replacement rates. In many cases, these birth rates have been below replacement level for decades, and populations are already beginning to fall. This poses all manner of practical problems from an economic and social point of view.
However, the large, multi-national organizations, which are generally headed up by extreme social progressives, are finding themselves having to thread the needle when they draw attention to this problem. As a recent article at the Catholic News Agency notes, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recently highlighted what they termed a fertility crisis. Their report found that many couples aren’t having as many children as they wish to have.
“One in 4 people currently live in a country where the population size is estimated to have already peaked,” explained a report by the UNFPA on this issue. “The result will be societies as we have never seen them before: communities with larger proportions of older persons, smaller shares of young people, and, possibly, smaller workforces.”
However, what is the UNFPA’s proposed solution to this problem? The need for more “reproductive autonomy”! By which, of course, they mean unfettered access to contraception and abortion.
And yet, surely it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why fertility rates have been falling all across the developed world. And I can tell you: it sure isn’t because of a lack of “reproductive autonomy”! Might it have something to do with the normalization of the contraceptive mindset and the hundreds of millions of preborn children aborted in these nations in recent decades? Entire vanished generations.
Rejoice and Keep Heart
The third anniversary of the Dobbs decision is a great opportunity to celebrate the incredible commitment of the pro-life movement to defending the most vulnerable amongst us. This was a hard-won victory: achieved through the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of committed pro-life activists. It has given us a path forward, opening up possibilities that didn’t exist three years ago. No longer will every meaningful state-level pro-life law simply be tossed out of Court because it can’t withstand a challenge based upon Roe.
And yet, we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Passing legislation at the state level is no easy task. Not only do we have to craft the legislation, and find sponsors to introduce it, but more fundamentally we need to educate the populace on the barbarity of abortion, so that state-level lawmakers will feel comfortable voting to pass pro-life laws, knowing that their constituents support them.
There is an army of pro-life activists out there working towards just these goals. Human Life International is one of these: our team members are travelling the United States, and indeed the world, informing people about the realities of contraception and abortion, and proclaiming the beauty of a Culture of Life. But there are many other organizations, teamed by heroic and competent pro-life leaders, who are doing the grinding, but rewarding work, of converting hearts and minds, and ushering the legislation that will save lives through state legislatures.
This third anniversary of Dobbs is a great occasion to look up your favorite pro-life organization, and support them, whether with donations, or volunteer time, or prayer. Certainly, HLI could use all the help we can get, as we challenge the juggernauts of the culture of death, creating a global culture in which every life is treated with the intrinsic respect that it deserves.