Does the Fight to End Abortion Need a Reset?
Toward a New Strategy
At the FAMiLY Leader’s annual Leadership Summit, Steve Deace, a prominent cultural commentator for The Blaze, delivered a nearly twenty-minute speech that has sparked both reflection and controversy within the pro-life community. Deace argues that the movement has stalled since the Dobbs decision, losing momentum and requiring a fundamental reset. Deace brings up several valid points of concern, but he has also faced criticism from the abolitionist movement, a group he seeks to form a coalition with. Through Deace’s talk we can see a potential vision for the fight for life moving forward under new conditions.
Pro-Life Stagnation
The pro-life movement as we know it today started in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade. For forty-nine years, pro-life advocates made numerous attempts to get Roe overturned, with hard-won success finally coming in June of 2022 with Dobbs v. Jackson.
But rather than building from the new foundation, the pro-life movement seems to have lost all momentum. Defeats in the new battleground, the state level, have marked the past three years since Dobbs. With Roe overturned, surely the reddest, most Trumpian states would have summarily eradicated abortion. This hasn’t been the case.
Deace lists several examples in his speech, including the passing of a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access in Ohio in 2023. As Deace points out, Ohio has become one of the reddest states in the nation, voting for Donald Trump three times and electing Republicans to both statewide and national office. A similar proposition was narrowly defeated in Florida, falling only three percent short of the necessary sixty percent majority vote. Conventional expectations would have predicted totally different outcomes.
National progress has been similarly slow. One major goal of the pro-life movement was getting Planned Parenthood federally defunded. That aim was met with the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill. However, Deace notes that the original bill defunded Planned Parenthood for ten years while the version that was passed and signed by President Trump only defunds the organization for one year.
Death By Success
There are other examples outside of Deace’s speech to support this view. After the Dobbs decision, several states passed legislation either limiting or banning abortion with some exceptions. Others had “trigger laws” in place that would become enforceable law in the event Roe was overturned. Despite this, the rate of abortion did not fall but actually increased slightly. This was in part because of the widespread use of abortion pills like mifepristone. In 2023, the FDA began allowing pharmacies to carry the drug and even mail it to women who requested it. The use of medications to induce abortions accounts for at least sixty-three percent of all abortions in the United States. Only fourteen states currently ban the drug, although it is still possible to obtain pills in these states.
Additionally, the Republican Party under Trump has seemingly put the abortion on the backburner. Throughout the 2024 election, Trump toned down his rhetoric on abortion and even had the Republican National Convention remove any mention of the issue from its platform. This move angered the pro-life community and alienated potential voters. Despite this, Trump won the election, highlighting the movement’s loss of influence. Where pro-lifers were once an essential voting bloc, they are now an afterthought. With Roe removed from the equation, the significance of the pro-life movement for a national platform has been greatly diminished. Trump delivered on his promises to the movement, but success has also neutralized their national effectiveness. The fact that some data indicates that most Americans support abortion access coupled with shifting coalitional boundaries in the new GOP, it seems, requires a different approach.
The Abolitionist Challenge
Since Dobbs, a growing number of antiabortion advocates have grown disaffected by the mainstream pro-life movement and have organized into a new movement of abortion abolitionists. Abolitionists desire to achieve equal protection under law for unborn babies and, by extension, complete, federally enacted, elimination of abortion. They want to see abortion treated as murder and legal punishment not only for medical professionals who administer abortions, but for the mothers who abort their babies as well. They often oppose abortion restrictions such as heartbeat bills, seeing these bills as insufficient (even immoral) compromises that subdue pro-life energy. For many abolitionists, Dobbs itself was an unacceptable compromise. Their all-or-nothing approach often puts them at odds with mainstream pro-lifers. To be sure, some abolitionists criticisms of the ineffectiveness and compromise of the pro-life lobby or industry are valid, namely, that its interest in self-perpetuation–or even outright institutional corruption– has limited its actual achievements.
Deace equates the rise of the abolitionism to a similar movement that drew his attention early on: the personhood movement, which sought to more accurately define the central question of when life begins. Deace sees a zeal in the new generation of abolitionists that was like the zeal that drove him to the personhood movement. He sees himself and those like him as an “in-between” generation between the pro-lifers and abolitionists, comparing this to the generation of children between Moses and Joshua in Exodus. Moses’s generation had to wander the wilderness for forty years because of disobedience to God, while Joshua’s generation was allowed to enter the Promised Land. Those in between were faced with the love and honor they had for their parents and the zeal of the younger generation who were critical of their grandparent’s disobedience and ready to enter the Promised Land.
Deace laments the growing schism between pro-lifers and abolitionists, advocating for a unity that transcends tactical differences. However, his plea is complicated by the abolitionists’ theological conviction that any compromise on justice is a betrayal of God’s command. For instance, seventy pro-life organizations’ opposition to equal protection bills in Louisiana exemplifies the strategic divide, a move Deace criticizes as counterproductive. Yet, abolitionists counter that such bills, like heartbeat legislation, perpetuate a partial justice that falls short of God’s standard, as articulated in Exodus 23:7: “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous.” This tension underscores a fundamental question: can a movement grounded in incrementalism reconcile with one demanding immediate, wholesale obedience to divine law?”
Bridging the Divide
Deace concludes his talk by arguing that the pro-life movement needs to take a step back, reset, and move forward with a unified vision that can unite the mainstream and the abolitionists. Internal, good faith discussions unto cooperation are needed. While he encourages debate, he advocates at least strategic, public unity. At bare minimum there must be a public ceasefire, and a general disposition that any and all means of limiting and ending abortion must be on the table.
Deace’s speech, while raising valid concerns about the pro-life movement’s stagnation, has drawn sharp criticism from abolitionists who see his call for unity as a capitulation or worse. Lizzie Marbach, a prominent abolitionist, responded by arguing that “[t]he two groups are mutually exclusive because one is grounded on the gospel & trusting in God, and the other is grounded on pragmatism & trusting in kings & chariots.” This critique is not merely tactical but theological, challenging Deace’s reliance on figures like Trump, whom he compares to Samson, as a savior of the cause.
While Deace’s speech was met with criticism from some within the abolitionist crowd, his analysis and strategic advice speaks for itself. With the fight to end abortion receding from national significance even in the GOP, internal divisions among those ostensibly aligned in their ultimate goal will only weaken the coalitional case for pro-life priorities. The fight to end abortion needs a common vision to fight for to build on the momentum that the victory in Dobbs should have given it.
A Way Forward
The ultimate end game is obvious: the total abolition of abortion in the United States of America. Abortion is an offense to God. The taking of innocent life should not be tolerated in this nation. A unified vision around this goal is necessary. Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).
With that goal in mind, there should be every effort made to vote for candidates who will champion this cause and to present, lobby for, and pass legislation that will achieve the end of abortion. Yet, in politics, compromise is inevitable. Abortion is not the only thing plaguing our nation, nor the only interest jockeying for attention. Divisions within the would be pro-life-abolitionist camp reduce its appeal to potential allies who, whether we like it or not, are not always so easily compelled by the sheer morality of our case.
If there is any guiding strategic principle here it is that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Small victories should still be celebrated if for no other reason that they maintain the relevance of the anti-abortion effort and compound momentum. You win by winning, as they say. Moreover, as the defeat of Roe proves, nothing, even “super precedent,” is irreversible. Weak or piecemeal policies can always be replaced or bolstered, but defeat, like victory, is contagious.
The fight to end abortion must be grounded in a vision that honors God’s demand for justice (Micah 6:8) while navigating the realities of political action. Steve Deace’s call for unity, though flawed, reminds us of the need what we can call movement discipline. The anti-abortion movement, in all its forms and factions, has not yet learned this lesson, but it must adopted this posture quickly if it is to continue the fight in the post-Dobbs era.
Image Credit: Unsplash.