Anti-abortion advocates say they are not sure their cause is better off than it was four years ago, when the Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortion with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, as abortion rates have continued to climb.
The Dobbs decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito and published June 24, 2022, was a culminating victory for the anti-abortion movement in its fight to overturn federal abortion protections under the precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
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But since the decision, anti-abortion advocates have had difficulty identifying a new agenda item to organize the movement and have lost support from Republicans at the federal level in advancing key policies.
The GOP distances itself
After Republicans failed to gain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections and abortion-rights ballot measures performed well, the GOP backed away from its support for the anti-abortion cause.
President Donald Trump, in particular, has distanced himself from anti-abortion goals. Most prominently, the Trump administration has not taken action to reverse the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration guidance on the abortion pill mifepristone that has allowed the drug to be sold online, even in the 21 states that have passed abortion restrictions in the wake of Dobbs.
Anti-abortion activists do credit him with some smaller policies, such as freezing federal funding for abortions overseas and enforcing conscience rights protections for doctors and hospitals choosing not to perform abortions.
But the abortion pill policy looms far larger in the minds of activists. Abortion policy experts contend that abortion rates have increased in the post-Dobbs era because of the FDA’s decision in 2022 to remove in-person screening requirements for mifepristone.
There were roughly 1,126,000 clinician-provided abortions nationwide in 2025, according to Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights think tank. That’s a 21% increase from 2020, the last year of comprehensive national estimates before the Dobbs decision.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Washington Examiner during a press call ahead of the Dobbs anniversary that the anti-abortion movement is not better off than four years ago if the standard of measurement is the number of abortions.
“I think there’s only one measure, and that’s the number of children that are sacrificed to other things,” Dannenfelser said. “I think on that measure, we are not better off.”
Post-Dobbs policy challenges in preventing abortion
Several anti-abortion organizations have made restricting mifepristone their central focus, since the drug is involved in roughly 2 of every 3 abortions in the United States.
Online abortion pill sales account for 24% of U.S. abortions, according to Guttmacher, an increase from 20% in 2024 and 12% in 2023.
Many of those sales are for pregnant women in states with abortion restrictions. Roughly 91,000 women from states with total prohibitions on elective abortions received mifepristone via telehealth in 2025, up from 72,000 in 2024.
Louisiana, which has a total prohibition on elective abortion, sued the FDA late last year in an attempt to reinstitute in-person screening requirements. The state argues abortion pills being shipped into Louisiana from out-of-state providers violates its sovereignty, estimating that there are roughly 900 elective mifepristone abortions per month in the state despite its anti-abortion law.
Trump administration health officials have said the agency is conducting a thorough safety review of real-world data on the abortion-pill-by-mail protocol, but anti-abortion advocates have suspected the administration is holding off on action until after the 2026 midterm elections.
Dannenfelser’s organization has been leading the charge for the Department of Justice to settle with Louisiana by reinstituting the in-person screening requirement for mifepristone, even without the FDA’s impending safety study on the drug. Dannenfelser said, however, that SBA Pro-Life America has “not been getting positive responses on that request.”
Adding to anti-abortion activists’ frustration is that Republicans in Congress have failed to follow through on the goal of defunding Planned Parenthood. They did pause reimbursements to the abortion provider for one year as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But payments to Planned Parenthood resume on July 4, and Republicans are not expected to be able to prevent that outcome.
When asked about the state of the anti-abortion movement, Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Iowa-based conservative group The FAMiLY Leader, told the Washington Examiner he sees the proliferation of chemical abortion as the leading reason why the movement is not as strong as it was before Dobbs.
“Are we better off today? No, we’re killing more babies today,” Vander Plaats said. “We’re being more creative in how we kill babies today.”
Kristen Day, head of the anti-abortion group Democrats for Life of America, told the Washington Examiner the abortion-pill-by-mail protocol “should have been shut down day one” by the Trump FDA. She said it is indicative of the large problem with anti-abortion groups over-relying on the GOP to advance their policy goals.
“I can imagine if you were a conservative pro-life organization, I would be even more furious,” Day said. “A lot of the pro-life groups put all their trust in the Republican Party, and they’re just not delivering.”
Pro-family wins despite anti-abortion losses
While the number of abortions nationwide has increased, some advocates see the advancement of various pro-family or pro-natalist policies as wins for the broader anti-abortion movement, even if they are not directly preventing abortions.
Day said overturning Roe “has freed up the movement” to focus on policies like paid family leave, the child tax credit, and pregnancy resource centers, all of which support families in their ability to raise children instead of choosing abortion.
The Trump administration has embraced a variety of pro-family or pro-natalist policies with the ostensible goal of reversing the decline in birth rates. That includes Trump Accounts, or $1,000 pre-funded investment accounts for newborns. Another such policy is the use of Title X family planning funds to promote pregnancy resource centers.
“I love the direction we’re going as a movement, and really focusing more on providing support and resources and things that will support families,” Day said.
The leadership of the House Pro-Life Caucus said in a Dobbs anniversary statement that the “most critical human rights issue” of the day is both “protecting unborn children from the violence of abortion and providing true assistance to their mothers.”
The co-chairs of the group — Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Andy Harris (R-MD), Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), Kat Cammack (R-FL), and Bob Onder (R-MO) — said their goal is to support pregnancy resource centers and promote pro-family policies that support pregnant women and their children.
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The co-chairs cited data from the anti-abortion group Charlotte Lozier Institute, estimating that more than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers across the country over the past five years have collectively led to the births of more than 828,000 children from women who visited a pregnancy center considering abortion.
“Pregnancy care centers provide the life-affirming assistance that women need in the face of the abortion lobby’s aggressive and unrelenting push for abortion in all forms, especially and including the mass proliferation of mifepristone — the baby poison pill,” the five House Republicans wrote.
