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. 

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.

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