March for Life Pays a Price for Victory

A Dynamism Lost

This year, after five decades of marching in the nation’s capital, the political insurgency of the pro-life movement had finally achieved its great victory: the overturning of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. For those conservatives who adopted pro-lifers into the broader movement in the 1970s, Dobbs v. Johnson also represented the consummation of a half-century of strategy: to seed the courts with our ideological scions and bide our time until the Supreme Court was conservative enough to roll back a pillar of the Sexual Revolution. The 50th annual March for Life, held in Washington, D.C., should have been—for all intents and purposes—the political celebration of the decade. Nevertheless, the energy my Ivy League peers and I basked in at this year’s march felt different from last year’s.

Chalk it up to anticipation consummated or a victory more than six months stale, but the march felt weaker. Less electric. Perhaps it was the attendance. Both organizers and the National Park Service have been tight-lipped about the total number of marchers but POLITICO noted the “palpable sense of relief” among organizers as the pre-march rally began. From my (limited) perspective, the crowd did seem smaller. Or perhaps the lack of energy resulted from the disappointing midterm results—after failing to take back the Senate and barely flipping the House, who could blame the mostly Republican crowd, two years out of power and counting, from feeling a bit discouraged. But neither of these explanations adequately account for the fact that, just months after its victory, the pro-life movement could not generate the same atmosphere that it did last year. Indeed, even many of the Ivy League attendees, who last year trudged the full distance of the march eagerly, left early to eat, rest, or just see the city.

Purposelessness After Victory

Fundamentally, I worry that the March for Life and the pro-life movement in general now faces a challenge that has struck every grassroots movement that has defined itself around one goal and then achieved it: purposelessness. For 50 years, pro-lifers targeted Roe v. Wade and understandably so. Without change at the appellate level, the movement could not target abortion as a policy in the way it wanted to. Legislative efforts could curtail where abortions could be performed, how they could be performed, and even who received them but not the action and its legality itself. This focus on courts came at a cost, however: pro-life policy came to mean not policy but judicial strategy and opinion. Now that our ultimate judicial goal has been achieved, that means that we must now wonder what being pro-life exactly means.

The simplest redefinition of the work of the march means no longer advocating for an overturn of precedent but for anti-abortion policy: federal and state bans on the practice. Are such ideas philosophically and morally sound? Yes. Are they feasible in a country where a majority do believe, in general, that abortion should be legal? Perhaps not. More questions arise when one considers whether the Republican Party has the political will to expend political capital towards such initiatives. Conservatives wasted millions of dollars and even more man hours seeking to prevent social changes such as the legalization of gay marriage which now seem a foregone conclusion and are even official law. With the new Congress’s fragile make-up and the country’s near 50-50 divisions, abortion restrictions seem dead on arrival as policy for the foreseeable future (though the perception of infeasibility did not stop pro-lifers in the 1970s). 

Political Reality

The biggest challenge to the abortion-restrictive definition of pro-life appears when one considers the very nature of such a goal. The judiciary, to an extent, is mechanical. Conservative legal thinking comprises several distinct, established philosophical schools. It was easy to predict, after such ideologies were fleshed out, how officers of the court ascribing to them would rule on precedents such as Roe v. Wade. Hence, the pro-life movement’s strategy was logical and clear: groom originalist and textualist judges, get them on courts, then wait until the right case comes up. 

The simple fact is, however, that politics are not mechanical. Effecting pro-life policy is not just a matter of grooming the right people for certain tracks toward judicial power but a matter of grooming the right people; electing them, often in spite of pro-choice or apathetic electorates; keeping them in power every two, four, or six years; ensuring that pro-life policy remains a priority over other priorities (with equally well-funded lobbying efforts); and actually passing legislation. That is not to mention the herculean effort of everything that comes after federal legislation, such as enforcement, or of banning abortion at the state level (which would mean the above, replicated 50 times). I have no doubt that pro-life professionals are ready and willing to meet this challenge. The fundamental question, however, is: Are the marchers? Are the grassroots—the families from Ohio and Michigan, the grandmothers and college students from Staten Island and South Bend, who propelled the pro-life movement to relevance, who made supporting judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade a shibboleth for their Senate candidates, who filled its coffers—ready for possibly five more decades of disappointment, heartbreak, and incremental change? With all considered, redefining the word “pro-life” to mean “in favor banning abortion at the federal or state level” appears to be anything but the prudent solution to the pro-life movement’s post-triumph moment. 

The remaining options for the movement are many, but all are painful. On one hand, the movement could continue to pursue a federal ban not through legislation but through the judiciary. However, it took decades to even begin chipping away at Roe v. Wade and bring the issue back to state-level consideration. It would take a century, at least, combined with radical cultural change to institute a reverse Roe. On the other hand, pro-lifers could give up their goal of a federal ban in exchange for a more realist state-level focus, effectively folding any hope of a nationwide prohibition. If you believe that abortion is murder, such a retreat would be tantamount to allowing genocide in some localities but not others. However, with the 2022 midterm results in mind, any effort by the GOP to make either federal or state bans a platform plank seems politically toxic. If conservatives are not able to hold legislatures or Congress, it will not matter what strategy the movement chooses.

The Path Forward

Hence, if we care about preserving life, then we must understand the high stakes of every election to come. Already, Democratic groups are gearing up for the 2024 election cycle to replicate victories such as in the Kansas referendum in August of 2022. The pro-life movement has been a judicial-legal one since its inception, but now it must be a political one, with the understanding of trade-offs that comes with politics.

It can no longer operate on dogma. In many cases, even Republicans who brand themselves “pro-choice” might serve the movement, supporting restrictions on the late-term, partial-birth, or even post-birth extremism of some leftists. To win some seats, pro-lifers should support these candidates. The movement can also no longer be a religious one. We live in an increasingly secular country. The pro-life arguments that win future elections and, hence, future anti-abortion victories will focus on the tangible medical horror that is abortion and on questions of viability outside of the womb, not on the indefinable concept of when life begins. Further, the movement will also have to directly confront the reasons why people become pro-choice, which foremost among is our national culture of promiscuity and the fact that our society is increasingly expensive to raise a child in.

Indeed, a pro-life movement that solely focuses on banning abortion is doomed. The question of unwanted children cannot be explained away with the well-intentioned retort that they can be given up for adoption. Pro-life policy must mean policy that not only restricts the taking of life but also makes it easier and more favorable for couples to actually produce life. From direct payments to mothers and families to punishment of irresponsible fathers, the possibilities for legislation in this area are not only many but also electorally palatable. And yet, it is the anti-life Left that has monopolized discussion of these family-related issues and made them part of its brand. Until conservatives compete in this area, any pro-life ideology is but a half-measure. That is not even to mention the broader work the Right must do in reforming a licentious culture, if there is any work that can be done. Nevertheless, what is clear is that the pro-life movement can still target abortion, but that can no longer be its only focus if it wishes to survive.

Conclusion

In January of 2023, the pro-life movement has much to celebrate. Dobbs v. Johnson was a beacon in a year of conservative disappointment and represented the first time in modern political history that the right has set an uncompromising, idealistic goal and achieved it. However, we would be wrong if we let this victory convince us that the pro-life viewpoint has somehow won the anti-abortion debate. The battle between life and death is anything but ultimately won. Triumph too often requires an exacting propitiation. In our case, recent victory subjects us to the reality of politics. To succeed in reality might very well require us to transform the goals of our movement or make what we once considered immoral and impossible compromises. This change will be hard and oft painful. But those who disagree would do well to consider history and the example of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which—scarcely a decade after its greatest victory—faced its most wrenching defeat, never to be reversed.