Four years after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision returned authority over abortion law to individual states, Catholic bishops and pro-life advocates are marking the anniversary with a sharp warning: the growing accessibility of abortion pills threatens to render state-level restrictions largely ineffective.

The Dobbs Anniversary

The June 2022 ruling ended nearly five decades of federal constitutional protection for abortion established under Roe v. Wade. Bishop Daniel E. Thomas of Toledo, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, recalled the court’s own words in characterizing the decision’s significance. “The Constitution does not confer the right to abortion,” he said, quoting the ruling directly. “Roe and Casey are overruled.”

For many in the pro-life movement, Dobbs represented a long-sought legal breakthrough — the opening of what advocates describe as 51 separate playing fields, one for each state plus the District of Columbia, where legislative efforts to protect unborn life could advance on their own terms.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, was standing outside the Supreme Court when the decision came down. She and other leaders have spent the intervening years pressing state legislatures to enact protections for unborn children.

The Abortion Pill Problem

The anniversary has also prompted candid assessments of what the movement has not yet achieved. On a press call held June 23, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, delivered a sobering appraisal of conditions in states that have enacted abortion restrictions. “Now, 15,000 children a month are dying in pro-life states,” she said. “That is the definition of failure.”

Dannenfelser attributed much of that figure to the cross-state accessibility of medication abortion. Federal regulators have permitted abortion pills to be prescribed through telehealth appointments, dispensed through pharmacies, and shipped by mail — including into states where surgical abortion is restricted or banned. States with permissive policies, such as California and New York, have made their pharmacies and telehealth networks available to patients in other jurisdictions, creating what amounts to a national distribution channel that state legislatures have so far been unable to close.

Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of FAMiLY Leader, an Iowa-based evangelical political advocacy organization, joined Dannenfelser on the call and echoed her concerns about the pill’s reach across state lines.

The challenge is structural. Because the regulatory decisions enabling widespread telehealth prescribing of abortion pills were made at the federal level, state laws restricting in-clinic procedures do not automatically address medication abortion obtained remotely. Pro-life advocates are increasingly focused on federal regulatory and legislative avenues as a result, even as they continue to defend and strengthen existing state laws.

Church Response and Upcoming Advocacy

The USCCB is planning a national prayer and advocacy effort running from mid-August through October, when the Church observes Respect Life Month. Bishop Thomas framed the effort as both a spiritual and civic undertaking, rooted in the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.

Catholic social teaching holds that the protection of innocent human life is a matter of justice, not merely religious preference. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states plainly that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” (CCC 2270). On that foundation, the bishops have consistently called for legal protections for unborn children while also supporting funding for pregnancy resource centers, maternal health programs, and adoption services.

The question of how federal courts will ultimately treat state efforts to restrict abortion pill distribution remains open. The Supreme Court has addressed related questions of regulatory authority and the limits of state power in recent terms, and further litigation over medication abortion access is widely expected. The Court’s recent decisions on religious liberty claims in institutional settings — including rulings on the scope of federal civil rights remedies — suggest an ongoing willingness to revisit the boundaries of federal authority over contested social questions.

For now, pro-life leaders are pressing on two fronts simultaneously: defending the legislative gains made possible by Dobbs while pushing for federal action on abortion pills before the anniversary of the decision recedes further into the past.

Category: Public Life