Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images A rally on the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision, June 24, 2023. Four years ago today, I stood alongside decades-long leaders of the pro-life movement when the Supreme Court declared that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion … and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Through joyful tears and contagious hope, the victory that movement leaders sought for nearly 50 years had been won. At that moment, I knew I would dedicate my life to seeing the legacy of Dobbs carried through to a new end — federal constitutional protections for the unborn.
But the road from Dobbs has not been an easy one for the movement. In the months following the Supreme Court’s decision, pro-life leaders learned that the strategies that had led to the overturning of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision would not carry us forward.
Young pro-life Americans like me, who have inherited this victory from past leaders, must be the architects of this new blueprint for meeting the new challenges facing this generation. So then, where is the pro-life movement headed?
If the movement’s goal is federal protections for preborn human life (which it must be), then our strategy must be centered around influencing public opinion. We are no longer bound by the constraints of Roe, and it is time we start acting like it.
Political victories matter, from restricting dangerous mail-order abortion to implementing pro-family policies to drive public opinion. These are not only important for moving popular sentiment toward protecting human life but essential for executing the authority to regulate abortions returned to the people under Dobbs.
Even so, politics cannot be the movement’s primary focus. Elected offices on Capitol Hill are revolving doors with leadership and majority constantly shifting from one party to the other. American government functions as a reflection of public opinion. Therefore, to see lasting pro-life leadership in the White House and Congress, protecting life must become popular opinion of a supermajority, not just a staple of the Republican Party platform.
For this reason, pro-life leaders must direct their strategy on building this pro-life supermajority, starting by reaching middle-of-the-road Americans—especially the next generation.
Although a 2024 survey by United Way shows that 32 percent of Gen Z regularly engage in activism regarding social issues such as abortion, the unfortunate reality is that my generation is also confronted with the greatest economic instability of any generation before. Housing costs are up, college is unaffordable, and growing your family is more expensive than ever before.
The pro-life movement has met women in their financial and material challenges in ways no other social movement ever has, primarily through a vast network of pregnancy help centers that cover many costs of giving birth and parenthood for their clients. But even that is not enough, since financial stress has become the norm. Financial challenges are one of the most common reasons women choose abortion, and so it is non-negotiable that we must treat the fight for life as something more comprehensive.
We cannot fail to continue directly confronting abortion head-on, but we must tailor our strategy so that the American public understands we know choosing life is not the end of their hardship. Lowering the cost of and closing the gap of maternal healthcare is the first place to start.
And policy is not the only place the pro-life movement must shift post-Dobbs. Even within the movement, many advocates holding on to dated messaging that has proven ineffective for reaching the middle.
In the 53 years since Roe, pro-life advocates have centered their messaging on the humanity of the pre-born. But although moral, fetal-rights focused narratives may work for some, Americans who hold moderate, nuanced views on abortion are rarely moved by this language.
A May 2022 Pew research poll, for example, found that even one-third of Americans who support legal abortion generally affirm that “human life begins at conception.” So they have already accepted the premise that abortion ends a human life. Yet they espouse the incoherent yet surprisingly common position once voiced by cable host Bill Maher, who famously said that abortion “kind of is” murder, only he is “okay with that.”
In contrast, a sincere centering of our efforts on protecting women has been effective in the past for shifting public opinion of those in the middle. By proxy, advocacy to safeguard women protects their preborn children while we continue fighting the greater battle of winning hearts and minds, so that the unborn are eventually valued as equals in their own right.
The pro-life movement needs its leaders to unite behind new post-Roe strategies that meet the American public where it is. We cannot leave our victory on the steps of the Supreme Court if our goal is to see the end of abortion in the U.S. in our lifetime.
Gavin Oxley is a media and policy strategist with Americans United for Life.
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