Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion has remained a mainstay in American public discourse. While pro-lifers rightly celebrated the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision which returned abortion policy to the people and their elected representatives, the ensuing years have produced mixed results as activists, lawmakers, and stakeholders on both sides have continued advocating, legislating, and politicking. Since Roe’s demise, there have been significant pro-life advances. From the passage of strong state pro-life laws to life-affirming actions by the Trump administration, new pro-life policies have been enacted since 2022. However, rising abortion rates and a slew of new pro-abortion laws in progressive states continue to counterbalance pro-life progress.
As we begin 2026, it is helpful to take stock of the pro-life movement, including recent victories and ongoing challenges. Undoubtedly, the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House in the first post-Roe presidential election is significant. The first year of the second Trump administration included a return to many of the pro-life policies of his first term. However, the administration’s reluctance to act decisively to protect women and children from abortion drugs demonstrates that much work remains.
In what follows, I will summarize the history of the pro-life movement since June 2022. In addition to new state laws that protect unborn children, hundreds of abortion businesses have closed, abortion drugs have been challenged in court, federal agencies have committed to reevaluate the safety of abortion drugs, and recent polling suggests that public opinion is trending in a pro-life direction. After reviewing these victories, I will focus on some of the remaining challenges. Notably, most of the victories celebrated since the overturning of Roe have been the result of an incrementalist strategy that seeks to save as many lives as possible while working toward the ultimate goal of making abortion illegal and morally unthinkable.
State Pro-Life Victories
As I document in my book, Life After Roe: Equipping Christians in the Fight for Life Today (B&H Academic, 2025), many pro-life states took immediate action after Roe was overturned. In fact, on the day of the Dobbs decision, several states moved to enact previously unenforceable pro-life laws. For example, within six minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision, then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the certification of his state’s pro-life law. Other states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas saw their conditional laws take effect immediately or within a few weeks of the decision.
Significantly, by the one-year anniversary of Dobbs, fourteen states protected life at conception. Additionally, four additional states had similar laws in place that were unenforceable while litigation played out in the courts. Five states had either passed heartbeat bills or already had a pre-Dobbs heartbeat bill on the books. An additional seven states protected unborn life based on gestational age (at the point when science is certain an unborn child can feel pain or at the point an unborn child is generally viable outside the womb), though some were unenforceable due to ongoing litigation.
As of January 2026, about half the states have strong pro-life laws in place. In December 2025, the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research think tank, identified 16 states that it considered “most restrictive” in terms of access to abortion. Another three states (Georgia, Nebraska, and Utah) were labeled “very restrictive,” and seven states were identified as “restrictive.” Guttmacher’s criteria for its most restrictive category included laws that protect unborn children at conception and heartbeat bills that protect life around six weeks.
In short, while much work remains for pro-life state legislators around the country, dozens of strong laws have been enacted since June 2022; 23 states now have laws protecting unborn children in the first trimester. Additionally, in 2025, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that pro-life laws in 14 states resulted in 22,180 additional live births above what would have been expected in the absence of these laws.
Defunding the Abortion Industry
According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 807 facilities providing abortions in 2020. Following Dobbs, several abortion facilities were forced to close. By March 2024, there were 765 clinics, a net loss of 42 clinics. Most of these closed facilities were in states that passed strong pro-life protections. In fact, as of March 2024, there were no facilities providing surgical abortions in the 14 states with complete protection laws in effect at that time. Remarkably, these states had a combined 63 clinics in 2020.
Facility closures accelerated in 2025 due, in part, to successful efforts to defund the abortion industry. In November 2025, The Washington Post reported that 20 abortion businesses closed in response to the enactment of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill, which was signed into law in July 2025, prevents Planned Parenthood from billing Medicaid. Significantly, these 20 shuttered facilities were in addition to more than two dozen Planned Parenthood locations that had closed in the early months of 2025 in response to other federal funding cuts.
The closure of abortion facilities in the United States has attracted national and even international attention. In 2025, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, NPR, and the London-based Guardian carried largely sympathetic stories about the plight of abortion businesses. In a press release published on July 1, 2025, Planned Parenthood warned that nearly 200 facilities were at risk of closure if President Trump’s tax bill became law. According to SBA Pro-Life America, 44 abortion facilities closed in 2025, with many of them citing the GOP’s tax law as the reason.
Additionally, on June 26, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed an executive order directing the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to remove a Planned Parenthood affiliate from the state Medicaid program due to the affiliate’s involvement with abortion. Planned Parenthood and several Medicaid recipients filed suit, arguing that Medicaid’s “free choice of provider” provision allows recipients to choose any qualified provider, including Planned Parenthood. Lower courts, including the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the abortion lobby.
However, in 2025, the Supreme Court reversed these decisions, explaining that Medicaid patients do not have a private right to sue a state if it excludes a provider from Medicaid. The ruling allows South Carolina to lawfully exclude Planned Parenthood—which performed a record 402,230 abortions and received a record $792.2 million in taxpayer funding during the 2023 fiscal year—from its Medicaid program.
The Supreme Court’s decision sets an important precedent and paves the way for other states to follow suit and exclude abortion providers from Medicaid. If they do, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers across the country could face the loss of millions in taxpayer funding.
Trump Administration: Pro-Life Policies
Since reassuming office, President Trump has enacted a range of pro-life policies. For instance, within the first two weeks of his second term, the president reversed several pro-abortion executive orders promulgated by former president Joe Biden. In one order titled “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” the president revoked Executive Order 14076, a Biden order that had required a government-wide effort to promote and fund abortion. Trump’s order also revoked Executive Order 14079, which had recategorized abortion as a form of health care and allowed individuals seeking abortion to use Medicaid for elective abortions across state lines.
President Trump also reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which ensures that U.S. tax dollars do not fund organizations or programs that carry out or promote abortion abroad. This action was similar to a 2017 order that covered $8.8 billion in so-called “family planning” and global health funds.
At the State Department, Secretary Marco Rubio announced in January 2025 that the United States would rejoin the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international initiative that affirms that “there is no international right to abortion.” In November 2025, the State Department adopted new guidelines for identifying human rights violations. According to its annual report on human rights violations, government-funded abortions and the distribution of abortifacient drugs are now considered “infringements” on human rights.
Additionally, the Trump administration has used the bully pulpit of the presidency to emphasize the humanity of the unborn. President Trump concluded his first week back in the Oval Office by addressing the March for Life through a video message and JD Vance spoke to march participants in person, promising that the new administration would champion pro-life policies. In the early weeks of the administration, President Trump also pardoned 23 pro-life activists who had been convicted under the FACE Act by the Biden Justice Department.
Finally, in his first international trip as vice president, JD Vance drew attention to the plight of Adam Smith Connor, a British Army veteran who was convicted for silently praying outside a U.K. abortion clinic. Although Vance’s comments drew a chorus of protest from European allies, the vice president did not retract his criticism of illiberal policies that target European pro-life citizens.
Early Legal Challenges to Abortion Drugs
In 2024, pro-lifers were disappointed when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a group of doctors and medical groups challenging the expansion of access to abortion drugs did not have legal standing. However, the case drew national attention to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) removal of safety standards during the Obama and Biden administrations.
For context, a group of pro-life doctors filed a lawsuit in November 2022 challenging the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone in 2000 and the subsequent removal of safeguards in 2016 and 2021. In April 2023, a federal district court sided with the doctors. Five days later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit allowed a portion of the district court’s order to stay in place, including the prohibition of sending abortion drugs through the mail. Although the Supreme Court paused the district court’s decision pending appeal, the case garnered considerable attention to the dangers represented by the drugs.
Although the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the doctors in June 2024, the decision was based on a legal technicality; the justices did not address the merits of the case. Moreover, the Court affirmed conscience protections for medical professionals. Since the Court’s decision, three states (Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri) have intervened in the lower courts to continue the fight to hold the FDA accountable.
Additional legal challenges to the abortion drug include a lawsuit filed in December 2025 by Florida and Texas against the FDA. The attorneys general for both states argue that the FDA has failed to properly evaluate the drug’s safety and effectiveness since its initial approval in 2000 and has disregarded the risks it poses to women.
Finally, in September 2025, Texas lawmakers passed a law allowing private citizens to sue manufacturers and distributors who mail abortion drugs into the state. The law, which took effect in early December, further prohibits the manufacturing of abortion drugs within Texas.
Concerted Pressure on the FDA to Reevaluate Mifepristone
In April 2025, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) released a bombshell report that showed 10.93% of women experience an adverse health event following a mifepristone abortion. Adverse health outcomes include sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, and other life-threatening complications. This number was 22 times higher than currently recognized by the FDA. The study, which included an analysis of 865,727 mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023, received national attention.
Following the publication of the EPPC report, pro-lifers called on the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone, or, at the very least, to restore previously removed safeguards including in-person physician oversight and mandatory adverse event reporting. On June 2, 2025, FDA Commissioner Martin Makary committed to conduct a full review of the abortion drug’s safety. In September 2025, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that the FDA was reviewing the safety of the drug.
Despite the commitments from Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary, in October 2025, the FDA approved an additional generic form of mifepristone. Although the White House insisted that the approval was mandated by law and should not be considered “an endorsement” of the drug, pro-lifers expressed frustration. In November 2025, 175 congressional Republicans wrote a letter to Kennedy and Makary emphasizing the importance of reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion drug.
Finally, in terms of abortion drugs, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, passed a resolution in June 2025, officially calling for the revocation of the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and, in the meantime, the restoration of previously removed safeguards. The resolution’s passage drew attention to the issue of chemical abortion among Southern Baptists and the broader evangelical world.
Abortion Polling Shifts in Pro-Life Direction
In an encouraging sign that pro-life sentiment is growing, KFF reported that fewer U.S. adults believe abortion drugs are safe when taken as directed. According to the report, in May 2023, 55% of Americans believed abortion drugs were “very safe” or “somewhat safe.” However, in November 2025, only 42% of Americans held this view. Among women of reproductive age, perception of abortion pill safety fell from 60% to 55%.
Additionally, a 2025 Gallup report indicated that the percentage of Americans who identify as pro-life has grown since the Dobbs decision. Whereas 55% of Americans identified as pro-choice in May 2022 (shortly after a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked), 51% identified as pro-choice in May 2025. In the same period, the percentage of those who identified as pro-life rose from 39% (May 2022) to 43% (May 2025). Likewise, 52% of Americans indicated that abortion was “morally acceptable” in 2022; 49% held that view in 2025. In the same period, those who believed abortion was “morally wrong” rose from 38% in 2022 to 40% in 2025.
Finally, an October 2025 report by McLaughlin & Associates found that seven in 10 voters want to restore the safeguards for the abortion drug mifepristone that were removed by the Biden administration. Surprisingly, 71% of likely voters believed a doctor’s visit should be required before the abortion drug is prescribed. Additionally, 87% of respondents indicated that FDA drug labels should include the “real-world impact of the chemical abortion drugs on patients who take it.”
Challenges: Abortion Drugs, Referendums, and Confusion in the Pews
Despite the steady progress achieved by pro-lifers since Dobbs, challenges remain. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the pro-life movement is the prevalence of abortion drugs. In November 2025, The New York Times editorial board rightly observed that “abortion pills have transformed the practice of reproductive medicine.” In fact, it is estimated that over 63% of abortions now take place through drugs. Although many states have passed strong pro-life protections, progressive states have passed “shield laws” that legally protect abortion providers who ship abortion pills through the mail to pro-life states in violation of their laws. Although federal law prohibits the mailing of any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion,” the federal government, even under the Trump administration, has refused to meaningfully enforce the law to its fullest extent.
Currently, at least twenty states have some form of a shield law in place protecting abortion providers, and eight of those include telehealth provisions, meaning they will not comply with any legal action that a pro-life state takes against a provider who sends abortion drugs within their borders. For example, New York is refusing to help Louisiana or Texas enforce its pro-life laws against a New York abortionist who has prescribed and mailed abortion drugs to abortion-seekers in those pro-life states. Although a New York judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in October 2025, it is likely that federal courts will soon be asked to address the legality of shield laws.
Another challenge facing pro-lifers is the ease by which pro-abortion amendments can be added to state constitutions. In 18 states, citizens can initiate the process to amend their state’s constitution. In many of these states, a simple majority is needed for passage. In 2022, voters in California, Michigan, and Vermont were the first to approve pro-abortion constitutional amendments. In 2023, Ohio voters also approved a pro-abortion amendment. In 2024, six states (Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, and New York) added permissive pro-abortion amendments to their state constitutions. Thankfully, voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota rejected similar referendums. However, the outcome of these ballot measures proves that statewide referendums, which can be influenced by tens of millions of out-of-state spending, will remain a challenge for pro-lifers in the foreseeable future.
Finally, although public opinion seems to gradually be shifting toward pro-lifers on a variety of issues, a 2025 report by the Center for Biblical Worldview (published in partnership with Dr. George Barna and Arizona Christian University) revealed that churchgoers remain divided on the Bible’s teaching on abortion. The report, which surveyed churchgoing Catholics, evangelicals, and mainline Protestants, included several surprising findings, especially when compared to a comparable 2023 report.
Whereas 63% of churchgoers identified as “pro-life” in 2023, only 45% identified as pro-life in 2025. Meanwhile, “pro-choice” identification rose 13 points (22% in 2023 to 35% in 2025). Similar to 2023, there was little consensus in 2025 about what the Bible teaches regarding abortion: 26% said never acceptable, 19% said acceptable if the mother’s life is endangered, 12% said acceptable if the child will be born with significant physical or mental challenges, and 4% said acceptable under any circumstance. Fourteen percent insisted, “none of these,” and another 16% admitted they did not know what the Bible teaches on the topic.
In 2025, 54% of churchgoers said the Bible indicates when human life begins, 24% said it does not, and 22% said they did not know. Among those who believe the Bible defines when life begins, 40% said it begins when the female egg is fertilized, 10% said the point at which the child has been delivered and begins breathing, and 9% said the Bible is not specific on the matter (after having just said that the Bible indicates when human life begins), and 7% said they did not know. Ironically, despite the pervasive confusion evidenced by these responses, only 25% wanted more teaching from their church in 2025 on the topic of abortion, compared to 31% in 2023.
Conclusion
Since Roe was overturned in 2022, pro-life states have enacted a variety of laws to protect unborn children and thousands of babies are alive today as a result. The Trump administration has also championed a variety of pro-life policies that have protected federal funds from being used to fund or promote abortion. However, progressive states have worked equally hard to circumvent new pro-life laws through shield laws and mail-order abortions. Some progressive states, such as Washington state, have even vowed to backfill millions of dollars that Planned Parenthood is set to lose after losing access to Medicaid reimbursements.
In short, recent years have brought meaningful pro-life gains worth celebrating. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain, particularly the growing prevalence of abortion drugs, which operate in a largely unregulated environment. With an administration that has been generally receptive to pro-life concerns, it is essential to continue making a strong case to the White House, HHS, FDA, and DOJ for revoking the approval of these dangerous drugs and, in the meantime, reinstating the safeguards that were rolled back under previous Democratic administrations. It is also imperative that the federal government enforce the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of abortifacient drugs.
Beyond federal action, the pro-life movement must continue pressing its case in the courts by challenging the constitutionality of shield laws. And for Christians, it remains vital to articulate the Bible’s pro-life ethic to friends, neighbors, and fellow congregants, grounding public advocacy in faithful discipleship and moral clarity.
