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.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.” Abortion rates in the U.S. from 1973 to 2025, Guttmacher Institute (Grace Hagerman, Washington Examiner)
