“It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.”
― Pope St. John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, no. 101
2026 is shaping up to be an important year in the fight over the rights of the preborn in the United States. In the past week, three significant stories related to abortion have captured my attention.
The first story is encouraging: eight Planned Parenthood facilities [1] have closed so far in 2026, continuing a four-year trend of declining abortion clinic numbers across the United States.
The second story is sobering. In several states, abortion-related ballot measures [2] will be placed before voters in the November midterms. In these states, countless vulnerable lives hang in the balance. Pro-life activists must be deeply involved in the efforts to defend life at the ballot box in November.
The third headline is both discouraging and bewildering. On March 31, the Trump administration announced [3] it would continue supplying Title X grants to Planned Parenthood for another year – subsidizing the nation’s largest abortion provider with taxpayer dollars, despite the President’s pro-life commitments and despite withering criticism from virtually every major pro-life organization in the country.
Taken together, these three stories emphasize a truth that I never tire of repeating, i.e., that the fight for the sanctity of human life is far from settled. Roe may be gone, but in many ways the fight for the legal, cultural, and spiritual transformation that will see every preborn human being valued and protected in our nation is just beginning.
There is much work to do.
Dozens of Abortion Facilities Closed
Let’s begin with what is genuinely cause for thanksgiving, and a sign of what is possible when pro-life activists stay focused.
By Easter Sunday, a total of eight Planned Parenthood facilities [4] closed for good in 2026, with closures in Texas, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana, and Washington. These closures continue a remarkable trend. According to Operation Rescue’s 2025 Annual Survey [5], 54 clinics closed or halted abortions last year. This is a record number, and the fourth consecutive year of decline in the number of abortion facilities operating in the United States.
Operation Rescue noted that three of the 2025 closures carry significant practical and symbolic weight.
In Colorado, the Boulder Abortion Clinic – for decades one of the very few facilities in the country willing to perform abortions deep into the third trimester – finally closed its doors a few months after its founder, Warren Hern, announced that he was stepping away at last. Hern had opened the clinic in 1975 and spent half a century performing what he himself described as his specialty: abortions done late in pregnancy, on fully formed preborn children. When he retired, he publicly insisted that the work would go on without him. It did not. No one was willing to take his place.
In Texas, Planned Parenthood was at last forced [6] to shutter its Prevention Park facility in Houston, a site it had spent more than sixteen million dollars to build in 2010 and had once paraded as the crown jewel of its national operation. Designed to be one of the largest abortion centers in the United States, the building now stands empty.
And in New York, the organization also closed its most symbolically loaded address of all: the Margaret Sanger Center at 26 Bleecker Street, named after the eugenicist whose movement became Planned Parenthood. The closure came amid mounting financial troubles and years of complaints from Planned Parenthood’s own employees about entrenched racism inside the organization.
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, noted that Planned Parenthood in particular “is getting desperate,” pointing to the organization’s mounting institutional troubles: “Their abuse of employees, financial malfeasance, and endless line of patient injuries is catching up to them – and no Medicaid safety net to bail them out.”
Operation Rescue’s 2025 report noted that four states now have zero Planned Parenthood presence, and that in addition to the closure of so many Planned Parenthood abortion facilities, dozens of other Planned Parenthood sites have shuttered their doors. These facilities didn’t offer abortions but functioned as referral centers for women seeking abortions.
Planned Parenthood’s financial troubles, and the closure of so many other abortion facilities, is a sign of hope and progress. However, as I always emphasize, victories like these, while deeply encouraging, must be placed into the broader context, if only so that we are grounded deeply in reality, and don’t lose sight of the amount of work left to do.
Counter-balancing the closures is the reality that over 40 abortion facilities opened their doors in 2025. Nevertheless, the net total dropped, continuing a trend that has been ongoing for years.
Also counterbalancing the good news of facility closures is the reality that more and more abortions in the U.S. are so-called “medical abortions,” i.e., those committed through the two powerful drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. The abortion movement’s recklessness with women’s health and lives means that many of these abortions are performed without meaningful medical supervision. As a result, the total number of abortions committed in recent years has continued to increase [7] slightly, despite Roe being overturned.
The Ballot Box Battlefield
The reality is that overturning Roe did not make abortion illegal in the United States. All it did was return the issue to individual states. That means that the political battle for life is now primarily being waged at the state level.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, the ballot measure has emerged [8] as one of the most important instruments in the fight over the right to life. The 2026 midterms promise to be a decisive chapter, with abortion-related measures certified or advancing in at least half a dozen states [9].
In Nevada, voters will decide whether to finalize a constitutional amendment enshrining a fundamental “right” to abortion. Abortion is already legal there until the 24th week, but proponents argue that a constitutional amendment would ensure that pro-life activists can’t make any advances in the state. This measure must be defeated.
In Virginia, a constitutional amendment protecting abortion is headed for the ballot after receiving legislative approval twice. Virginia has become a major destination for abortion seekers across the South, making the outcome significant far beyond the state’s borders.
In Idaho – one of the states with the strictest pro-life protections in the nation, with felony penalties for abortion providers – a signature drive is underway for a ballot initiative that would legalize abortion until viability. Organizers claim to have gathered more than 50,000 of the 71,000 signatures needed by the May 1 deadline.
Oregon, meanwhile, is advancing an omnibus measure that would bundle abortion, contraception, same-sex “marriage,” and gender-affirming care into a single constitutional amendment.
On the pro-life side, the most important fight may be in Missouri. In 2024, voters approved a constitutional amendment recognizing so-called “reproductive rights,” overturning one of the nation’s strongest pro-life laws. The legislature has responded with a counter-amendment that would repeal the 2024 measure and prohibit abortion from conception, with limited exceptions.
Finally, in Nebraska, voters will be voting on an initiative that would recognize the personhood of preborn children in the state constitution.
A Political Betrayal
Unfortunately, in the lead up to this crucial fight over the rights of the preborn on state-level ballot initiatives, the Trump administration threw the pro-life movement a major curveball.
On March 31, the administration announced [10] it would extend Title X grants to Planned Parenthood for another year. These grants will subsidize the nation’s largest abortion provider, an organization responsible for the deaths of over 400,000 preborn children annually. And this despite the fact that the first Trump administration enacted the Protect Life Rule to stop Title X funding of Planned Parenthood, and despite the expectation of pro-life voters that the second administration would do the same.
Pro-life leaders did not mince words. Marjorie Dannenfelser of SBA Pro-Life America called the decision “an inexplicable slap in the face to the pro-life GOP base” and “political suicide.” Lila Rose of Live Action called it “a betrayal of the pro-life Americans who expected this administration to stand firmly against abortion.” The March for Life’s Jennie Bradley Lichter called it “absolutely maddening.”
Beyond Politics
The Title X story reinforces a lesson that the pro-life movement has learned countless times over the decades: political power is an unreliable guardian of moral truth.
This is not an argument for political disengagement. Catholics have a duty to vote, to advocate, and to work for just laws – especially in states where the right to life is literally on the ballot this November. But it is an argument for realism about what politics can and cannot accomplish.
The real battle is not, in the end, a political one. It is a battle for hearts and minds. It is the patient, difficult, indispensable work of conversion – of helping our neighbors to see what the Natural Law makes plain: that every human life, from conception to natural death, possesses an inviolable dignity that no vote can confer, and no vote can take away.
This is why the family is so essential. As I have written previously [11], on many occasions, the family is the first school of love, the first place where children learn that every human person is sacred. It is within the family that the Culture of Life is either transmitted or lost. No legislation can substitute for what a mother and father teach their children about the dignity of human life simply by the way they live.
And this is why the Church’s bishops, priests, deacons, and catechists bear a particular responsibility in this moment. The faithful in the pew need to hear – clearly, unapologetically, and with pastoral charity – the truth about the sanctity of human life, the moral foundations of just law, and their obligations as citizens. They need to be formed in conscience so that when they enter the voting booth, they do so not as partisans of a political party but as witnesses to the truth about the human person.
(For more information about voting in line with the Catholic Church, see our e-book: Vote Like a Catholic [12].)
[12]A Call to Witness
Pope St. John Paul II concluded Evangelium vitae [13] with a call for “a general mobilization of consciences and a common ethical effort to set up a great strategy in favor of life” (no. 95).
The closing of abortion facilities is a sign of hope. The proliferation of ballot measures, many of which would strip away the rights of preborn children, is a sign of how much work remains. And the continued public funding of Planned Parenthood is a reminder that no political alliance can substitute for the conversion of culture.
The battle for life did not end when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. That’s when it began. For the first time in 50 years, our efforts to protect life weren’t doomed to failure before they even began. Now we can pass pro-life measures and not expect them to be shot down by the first judge that reviews the case.
This new era of opportunity must inspire within pro-life citizens a renewed commitment to engaging the political process. At the same time, we must support and expand the pregnancy care centers, maternity homes, and support networks that offer women real alternatives – serving women and their children. And we must work to close every abortion clinic in this country.
And we must never forget that the ultimate victory of the Culture of Life will come not from the ballot box, but from the transformation of hearts and minds – one person, one family, one community at a time.