The Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn in vitro fertilization at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week, despite the objections of some members.
Conservative advocates pushing for sharp limits on medication abortions lost a landmark case at the Supreme Court after pursuing a strategy that many of their allies thought went too far.
Former President Donald Trump told Republicans at a closed-door meeting to stop talking about abortion bans that would limit the procedure to a certain number of weeks.
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In one chaotic week, the anti-abortion movement showed major players pulling in different directions and struggling to find a clear path forward, two years after their victory in the fight against Roe v. Wade.
The division begins at the most fundamental level: whether we should even continue to push for an end to abortion, or whether we should move on in other areas of reproductive health, including fertility treatments. A movement that once marched almost in lock-step is mired in infighting and unable to arrive at a fundamental agenda.
In some cases, hardliners are seizing the reins and rejecting the step-by-step strategy that made their movement successful in overturning Roe. Other opponents of abortion are retreating, sensing the political volatility of the moment.
At a luncheon at the Southern Baptist Convention this week, Tom Ascol, a prominent conservative pastor from Florida, lamented what the fragmentation meant for their cause.
“The most important thing is: can we agree on the goal?” he said in a panel discussion. “Is the goal the absolute abolition of abortion in our country?”
Some applauded loudly. Others remained silent.
For decades, the movement had honed a strategy to achieve a single goal: ending the constitutional right to abortion. But after that victory, the anti-abortion movement suffered a series of political losses. Democrats have won ballot initiatives in more than six states to protect abortion rights in state legislatures.
For the first time in half a century, Republicans are trying to win a presidential election without using the rallying cry to end abortion as a mobilization tactic for their base. The stakes are higher because it is unclear whether Trump will simply comply with their wishes in a second administration, as he did in his first.
While opponents of abortion dominate many conservative state houses and courts, their efforts to go further — to ban abortion and transform reproductive health — have occasionally backfired. Republicans in swing states, prominent Senate candidates and even their champion Trump have all backed away from the anti-abortion agenda, fearing greater political fallout.
Even in anti-abortion strongholds, control is waning. In Arizona, anti-abortion supporters make up the bulk of Republican elected officials in the state legislature, but this spring they narrowly lost their heated battle to restore a near-complete 1864 abortion ban.
“We’re at a point of reckoning, especially on the political side, where candidates, elected officeholders, have to make a choice about how much they want to protect life,” said Greg Scott, vice president of policy at the Center for Arizona Policy. supported the 1864 ban.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America who has spent years working on an incremental strategy, has urged Republicans to embrace a national 15-week abortion ban. When Roe fell, her organization was particularly concerned about Democrats’ use of referendums to secure abortion rights in state constitutions. But now she sees a much bigger threat: Democrats win office nationally and eventually Roe is codified with something called the Women’s Health Protection Act.
You have another election like the 2022 midterms, she said, “and all ballot initiatives are a moot point.”
While she is disappointed in those results, she draws lessons from the long-term vision of her movement, which has historically refused to give up even in the face of major setbacks.
“The hidden reality of the pro-life movement is its determination,” she said. “It would be unrealistic to think this would be a straight line to success.”
In interviews, anti-abortion activists sometimes sounded frustrated. Some blamed the media, while others acknowledged that their views belonged to the minority. A third of Americans agree with the statement that “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights,” according to the Pew Research Center.
Dr. Christina Francis, leader of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, lost at the Supreme Court this week in the case that could limit access to medication abortion.
“We still have a lot of work to do to talk to people about this issue,” she said in an interview last month. “Public opinion will not change overnight.”
A major challenge is getting lawmakers and politicians to move forward at all now that Roe is gone, said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. “They’re not really aware of everything that can and should happen,” she said. “For us it’s a lot of education.”
She sees a broader cultural challenge in the rising generation whose views on humanity have been shaped by secularism, not by parents who took them to church, she said. Many don’t want children at all, she noted.
An uncompromising part of the movement is committed to “fetal personhood,” or giving embryos constitutional rights, a mission based on its Christian values. Jason Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, is organizing allied state lawmakers to push for such legislation and sees irreconcilable differences for America’s future.
“The bottom line for America is that we are basically living in the same environment as the nation was in the 1850s, where the argument was that you could have slave states and free states,” he said. “The nation cannot continue with ‘kill states’ and ‘life states’.”
But other local actors in the anti-abortion movement are pushing for a longer-term strategy.
“Gone are the days, in Ohio, when legislation was introduced simply to restrict abortion,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, citing his state’s new constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion, that voters approved in November.
“Maybe we should accept less than a whole loaf,” he said. “Our movement, our elected officials, need to realize that sometimes you have to take what you can get now and live to fight another day.”
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