Anti-abortion activists will have multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease — when they gather Friday in Washington for the annual March for Life.
The march, which includes a rally drawing abortion opponents from across the nation, has been held annually since January 1974 — a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision established a nationwide right to abortion.
This year’s gathering — 50 years after that decision — will be the first since the high court struck down Roe in a momentous ruling last June.
Since then, 12 Republican-governed states have implemented sweeping bans on abortion, and several others seek to do the same. But those moves have been offset by other developments. Abortion opponents were defeated in votes on ballot measures in Kansas, Michigan and Kentucky. State courts have blocked several bans from taking effect. And myriad efforts are underway to help women in abortion-ban states either get abortions out of state or use the abortion pill for self-managed abortions.
“It’s almost like the old wild, wild West … everything is still shaking out,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee.
With numerous Democratic-governed states taking steps to protect and expand abortion access, Tobias likened the current situation to the pre-Civil War era when the nation was closely divided between free states and slave states.
“I will not be surprised if we have something like that for a few years,” she said. “But I do know that pro-lifers are not going to give up — it’s a civil rights issue for us.”
The theme for this year’s March for Life is “Next Steps: Marching Forward into a Post-Roe America.” Scheduled speakers include Hall of Fame football coach Tony Dungy and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who won the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe.
The president of March for Life, Jeanne Mancini, depicted the June ruling as “a massive victory for the pro-life movement.”
“But the battle to build a culture of life is far from over,” she said. “March for Life will continue to advocate for the unborn and policies that protect them until abortion becomes unthinkable.”
Prospects for any federal legislation restricting abortion nationwide are negligible for now, given that any such measures emerging from the Republican-led House would face rejection in the Democratic-led Senate. The main battlegrounds will be in the states.
Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.
Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.
Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.
The Guttmacher Institute, a research group which supports abortion rights, says the overall result is “a chaotic legal landscape that is disruptive for providers trying to offer care and patients trying to obtain it.”
“When people do not have access to abortion care in their state, they are forced to make the difficult decision to travel long distances for care, self-manage an abortion or carry an unwanted pregnancy to term,” Guttmacher staffers Elizabeth Nash and Isabel Guarnieri wrote last week.
Looking ahead, some anti-abortion leaders hope the Republicans nominate a 2024 presidential candidate who will aggressively push for nationwide abortion restrictions, rather than keep it as a state-by-state matter.
“The approach to winning on abortion in federal races, proven for a decade, is this: state clearly the ambitious consensus pro-life position and contrast that with the extreme view of Democrat opponents,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America.

Apnews