Three Years After Dobbs, The Pro-Life Movement Is Just Getting Started 

The leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, and the historic ruling that followed, weren’t just legal landmarks — they were cultural earthquakes.

For millions of Americans, those days are seared into memory, standing alongside the moon landing or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But Dobbs wasn’t the end of the fight for life — it was the beginning.

For the first time in half a century, Americans could protect the lives of babies in the womb through their state and federal representatives. Red states were ready to run with the ball. Several had trigger laws — laws designed to take effect to protect babies at conception the moment Roe fell — that went into effect when the decision came down. Others, like South Carolina and Florida, moved quickly to pass legislation safeguarding life.

Those bold moves were met with electoral reward: Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-election in a Florida landslide, as did Governors Kim Reynolds, Mike DeWine, and Brian Kemp in Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia, respectively. We very quickly reached the point where half of the states had pro-life laws.

Now, the pro-life movement has turned to its next major historic battle: defunding Planned Parenthood and dismantling the forced taxpayer funding of the abortion-industrial complex.

For decades, taxpayers have been forced to fund abortion businesses, with the lion’s share of funding coming from Medicaid. With Planned Parenthood responsible for more than 400,000 abortions annually, Americans have been forced to subsidize the leading cause of death for far too long.

But there’s a plan to end this. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which recently passed the House of Representatives, pulls the plug on Medicaid funding for abortion businesses.

It could have a seismic impact.

After President Donald Trump froze $27.5 million in Title X dollars to Planned Parenthood, POLITICO reported that several Planned Parenthood affiliates were closing or struggling to stay afloat.

Manhattan’s only Planned Parenthood closed. Four Michigan facilities are shutting down. Two Utah Planned Parenthoods closed at the end of last month. Four Planned Parenthood facilities in Iowa and four more in Minnesota are closing.

If that’s the impact of $27.5 million, we don’t have to guess what taking away $529 million in Medicaid funding annually will do. Planned Parenthood says this would mean 200 of their facilities would close.

With Republicans on Capitol Hill energized to stop the forced taxpayer funding of abortion businesses and around 60% of Americans against publicly funding abortion, Planned Parenthood is growing desperate. They took out a New York Times ad, which likely cost tens of thousands of dollars, that featured Harry Styles, Megan Thee Stallion, Doug Emhoff’s daughter, Jussie Smollett’s sister, and other celebrities calling for the forced taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.

This is just one example of how Planned Parenthood funnels resources into political activism, money that could instead be used to improve basic health standards at their facilities.

Planned Parenthood’s spending priorities have horrific results: a stillbirth after an IUD was placed when a woman was pregnant, biohazards and raw sewage left to fester in a Nebraska facility for days, and botched HIV and syphilis tests, to name a few. Most tragically, an 18-year-old girl in Colorado died after a late-term abortion at a Planned Parenthood facility earlier this year.

Women on Medicaid will be much better served by community health centers, which already outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities 15:1. These centers provide much more comprehensive and higher quality care than entities that exist to sell abortions.

We are optimistic this will be the year we defund Planned Parenthood — which would help pro-life Republican candidates win elections in 2026 and 2028. But Democrats, the legacy media, Hollywood, liberal universities, and other woke institutions are doing everything within their power to prevent the greatest human rights victory of our time.

Ballot measures have wiped away pro-life laws in Ohio, Arizona, and Missouri, where Republican leaders failed to fully engage in the battle. Activist courts have stopped states from protecting babies in the womb. Shield laws — designed to give blue state abortionists immunity when they ship abortion drugs into pro-life states — and similar workarounds from the Biden administration allow blue state abortionists to bypass pro-life laws, kill unborn children, and harm women across state lines by mailing abortion drugs.

All of this means that the total number of abortions performed in the United States has increased since the Dobbs decision. While there is no definitive way to calculate the total number of abortions performed each year, a new Charlotte Lozier Institute study reveals a startling reality.

The study compiles existing data from pro-abortion entities like the Guttmacher Institute and #WeCount, and shows the total number of abortions is at least 1.1 million annually.

This is not the time to retreat. This is the time to go on offense. Human rights battles are never won overnight. Slavery wasn’t abolished in just a few years, nor was segregation.

The fall of Roe was the start of the most significant human rights movement of our time. Bringing this movement to a successful conclusion will take persistence, unity, and courage.

Now is the time for the pro-life movement to reignite, take the historic step of defunding Planned Parenthood, and to elect leaders who don’t flinch when the stakes are high. We stand on the shoulders of decades of sacrifice and prayer, and, by the grace of God, we believe this could be the year we take the next big step.

Because the fight for life isn’t over.

It’s just getting started.

Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She has been called “the woman who brought down Roe.”

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.