At a closed-door meeting last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Republican senators were briefed on a new study encouraging them to move away from “pro-life” language as potentially alienating voters in the wake of Dobbs. This report was a direct response to a string of defeats the pro-life movement has experienced at the ballot box over the past year, mainly on proposals to amend state constitutions.
Proposals to neutralize the state constitution as a source of abortion rights were rejected by voters in Kansas and Kentucky, while, in California, Michigan, and Vermont, voters approved proposals to add so-called abortion rights to their state constitutions. The outcomes in California and Vermont were not surprising and, in any event, neither state was likely to regulate, much less prohibit, abortion. But the outcomes in Kansas, Kentucky, and, particularly, Michigan were very disappointing. The vote in Michigan effectively overturned 50 years of successful pro-life advocacy in the state, wiping out not only the pre-Roe law prohibiting abortion but a broad spectrum of post-Roe laws regulating abortion.
All of these results call for reflection by the pro-life movement. Reflection, not despondency, for all great social movements take time and often experience defeats on the way to ultimate victory. After all, it took almost 60 years for the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and ban segregation in public schools, and almost 50 years to persuade the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) to overrule Roe
