Published October 2024
It has been two years since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning Roe v. Wade. It is worth taking stock of where the pro-life movement finds itself now.
Over the past few months, children have been born, and some have celebrated their birthdays, because Dobbs allowed their states to provide them with legal protections against the lethal violence of abortion. Some of these little ones are already walking, talking, and giggling, thanks to fifty years of work by pro-life activists.
But every time abortion policies have appeared on state ballots since Dobbs, the people have voted against life. Public opinion has shifted drastically in favor of abortion in the past decade. In response, the Republican Party has watered down its platform language about, and weakened its commitment to, the unborn. It took fifty years to overturn Roe, and, for all we know, it may take even longer for us to protect every unborn child in this nation. We need to be committed for the long haul.
In his last major address before his death, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus declared: “Until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life, we shall not weary, we shall not rest.” Protected in law and cared for in life remains the legal and cultural goal. But it will take time. Our entire constitutional, political, and social order was corrupted by fifty years of Roe. Conservatives are correct to point to the pedagogical function of law—the law is, as Aristotle noted, a teacher. The pedagogical result of a bad Supreme Court ruling, which was allowed to stand for so long, is the darkening of our national conscience. Generations of Americans were catechized in the beliefs that abortion is a right and that unborn babies have no rights—and that we have no duties to the unborn. Though Dobbs did important work to repair part of the damage to our constitutional order, it doesn’t—couldn’t—erase half a century of political and social corruption. And even for those of us who believe the unborn are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, constitutionally entitled to equal protection, widespread recognition of that fact is not going to happen quickly. We need to lay the groundwork for success in the long term.
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Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
