Four Years After Dobbs, Pro-Life Movement Grapples With Biggest Challenge Yet

Four years after the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling ending the bloody legacy of Roe v. Wade, pro-life activists struggle to confront a new challenge that has proved just as difficult: mail-order abortion pills.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, many activists believed that states would be empowered to end abortion without the interference of the federal government. Now pro-life leaders say federal regulations and state shield laws are allowing leftist activists and organizations to flood states — where medication abortion is technically illegal — with abortion pills. 

“We find that the abortion drug has usurped the sovereignty of those states, and that people like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, are determining policy for pro-life states, to the extent that now 15,000 children a month are dying, in pro-life states that have strong pro life protections,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said during a Tuesday call attended by The Daily Wire. 

“That is the definition of failure,” she added. 

While red states responded to Roe with trigger laws prohibiting doctors from administering abortions, blue states enacted so-called “shield laws” designed to protect those who illegally ship abortion pills across the country from prosecution. 

Medication abortions, which are the most common abortion method, are facilitated by a woman taking mifepristone and misoprostol. After a pregnant woman takes mifepristone, the unborn child is cut off from the nutrients it needs to survive and is effectively starved to death. Misoprostol is then taken to induce labor and expel the deceased baby from the mother. 

A previous Daily Wire investigation found that leftist activist groups send foreign-made abortion pills into states with the only requirements being an address and some form of payment online. One recent study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute identified eight online pill providers that use so-called shield laws to ship pills into states where medication abortion is technically illegal. 

Many pro-life leaders say the problem could be greatly addressed if the FDA rescinded a Biden-era policy that allowed abortion pills to be dispensed through the mail. The FDA is currently conducting a safety study of the abortion pill and said it won’t adjust policy while the study takes place

Dannenfelser has urged the Justice Department to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Louisiana against the FDA’s abortion policy. The suit says that the FDA’s policy prevents Louisiana from enforcing its restrictions on medication abortions. 

“There is a record of this administration certainly challenging injustice, and running straight towards the battle,” she said. “That’s the kind of courage that we’ve come to see and desire.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department told The Daily Wire that it asked the judge to give the FDA more time to review its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for the abortion drug. 

“On behalf of the FDA, the Justice Department has requested more time from the court for the FDA to complete its review of mifepristone REMS, ensuring our federal health agencies can change their policies without judicial interference,” the spokesman said. “As the Supreme Court recognized in a unanimous ruling less than two years ago, it is the role of the FDA — not the federal courts — to evaluate drug safety data and impose appropriate precautions.”

Largely fueled by the availability of the abortion pill, some estimates indicate that abortions have actually increased since Dobbs. 

“No, we’re killing more babies today,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Iowa-based Family Leader, when asked if the pro-life movement is better off than it was four years ago. “We’re being more creative in how we kill more babies than they were.”

He said that they used to be worried about people traveling out of state to Illinois for abortion but that now the “abortion destinations [are] in your mailbox.”

Grappling with the problems of the abortion pill, some pro-life leaders say the overturn of Roe also created problems for the Left that should not be ignored. 

Shawn Carney, the CEO of 40 Days for Life, said that pro-abortion activists now have to make the case for abortion as a positive good and cannot hide behind Supreme Court precedent.  

“They just had to say, ‘It’s the Supreme Court, it’s the law of the land, and that’s it,’” he told The Daily Wire. “So when Dobbs got rid of Roe, they had to start talking about abortion, and that hasn’t gone well because they’ve never had to do that. They never had to have any kind of basic talking points on why abortion is good, what it is as a surgery, how it operates.”

Recently, Rep. Brandon Gill went viral for exposing the brutal nature of abortion during an exchange with a pro-abortion advocate who repeatedly refused to answer when asked about her preferred method of abortion. 

“The left has never had to articulate why abortion’s good, and now that they have to, because it’s state by state, they can’t,” Carney said.

Carney did say that the mail-order abortion was the largest challenge for the pro-life movement. 

“The mail order abortions, which was started under Biden during COVID, that is the biggest problem right now that we face … because we don’t know who’s getting these pills.
We don’t know how they’re using them,” he said. 

“We’re sending these two pills that are designed to kill a baby to just some random apartment. We have no idea who gets it. They don’t have to sign for it,” he added. 

He also said that the pro-life movement should not underestimate the opportunities to work in deep blue states. While they can’t change laws on the ground, they can change minds and hearts, Carney said. 

Carney also praised President Donald Trump as the most “pro-life president ever” and said he thought criticism of the president’s approach to the issue was “over the top” and “unprofessional.” 

Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Dobbs and has taken numerous actions to cut off federal funding for abortions. During his first week back in office, Trump issued pardons to nearly two dozen pro-life activists who were targeted by the Biden administration. 

“This Department of Justice remains committed to advancing President Trump’s pro-life agenda, including through dismissing criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against peaceful pro-life advocates targeted by the previous administration, and using the FACE Act to protect pro-life pregnancy centers,” a DOJ spokesman told The Daily Wire. 

Some elected Republicans at the state level are embracing a new approach that involves criminalizing abortion for all involved, including the mother. Laws in states like Tennessee and South Carolina were proposed this past legislative cycle that would treat abortion as murder.

These kinds of laws, which are opposed by traditional pro-life groups, are supported by groups like the Foundation to Abolish Abortion which says they are the only guaranteed way to end abortion. Foundation to Abolish Abortion President Bradley Pierce told The Daily Wire that laws aimed at going after suppliers were not enough. 

“These abortion regulations cannot be enforced against the established supply chain of abortion pills from overseas, and cannot be reliably enforced domestically unless and until the Supreme Court makes a decision regarding shield laws,” he said. “That is why lawmakers must establish equal protection for preborn babies, applying the laws against homicide within their own jurisdictions against every willful participant in abortion.”

Pierce said that “abolition” bills “deter both the supply and demand of abortions” and are the Christian approach to ending abortion. He says his group will continue to work with state lawmakers on drafting similar legislation. 

“In order to advance abolition bills, we are recruiting and educating state lawmakers, providing them assistance as they draft and introduce equal protection legislation, and making the case for abolition in the public square,” he said. “Other abolitionists across the country are also launching and growing grassroots efforts to elect more Christian lawmakers who champion equal protection.”

While Democrats campaigned heavily on restoring Roe in 2022 and 2024, public opinion is roughly unmoved, according to Gallup polling. Recent numbers show that roughly 49% of Americans want abortion to be legal in only a few cases (32%) or illegal in all (17%) cases while 48% say abortion should be legal in all (33%) or most (15%) circumstances. 

In 2025, over half of Americans (51%) identified as pro-choice, including 61% of women and 41% of men. In comparison, 43% of Americans said they were pro-life, including 54% of men and 32% of women.