In the three years that followed Dobbs, the pro-life movement may have sometimes felt like it was absorbing one body blow after another. The “One Big Beautiful Bill”—despite the legislation’s notable flaws—comes as welcome relief, standing as social conservatives’ biggest victory since the end of Roe. The legislation includes a one-year ban on federal funding toward that bête noire of so many pro-lifers for so many years: Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Almost as important as the defunding itself, the win suggests social conservatives still have a seat at the table, as the future vice president promised they would last summer. Defunding Planned Parenthood was certainly not a strong priority of the president relative to other campaign promises. But there were sufficient champions in Congress, from House Speaker Mike Johnson on down, to ensure the defunding of “Big Abortion” got included in the bill. Significantly, pro-life groups were able to be strategic about their requests and avoid the temptation of counterproductive infighting. As a result, the White House was content to let social conservatives notch a long-sought-after win.
It could have been even bigger—the initial bill included a ten-year ban. But the Senate’s strict rules around which legislation can be passed by a simple majority, along with a self-imposed ticking clock, forced the ban to be scaled back. As it stands, a one-year federal funding moratorium poses a major—though far from insurmountable—challenge for the organization in the crosshairs.
It comes at a tricky time for Planned Parenthood, which has suffered some recent PR hits. A New York Times investigation unearthed stomach-churning details about low quality of care, and some affiliates are facing lawsuits for providing “gender-affirming” hormones to youth suffering from gender dysphoria.
But the organization’s brand remains synonymous with “family planning” in the minds of many well-meaning progressives. Stories of women relying on Planned Parenthood locations for unobjectionable health services, like cancer screenings, will be used to make the case for continued public funding. In its fundraising appeals, the organization alleges that “as many as 200 Planned Parenthood health centers are at risk of shutting down.” Washington state governor Bob Ferguson has already pledged to use state tax dollars to “step into this temporary gap to ensure women continue to have access to critical health care.” Other states may follow suit, and the star-studded Hollywood fundraisers are surely not far behind.
Of course, if it were just about mammograms and Pap smears, Planned Parenthood wouldn’t be such a lightning rod. Defenders claim that abortions only make up 3 percent of what it does—true only if you tally up each individual pregnancy test, primary care referral, and pack of condoms distributed as a discrete “service.” But in the same breath, they argue that abortion is central to Planned Parenthood’s purpose as an organization, as the late CEO Cecile Richards did in her memoir, recounting a 2017 meeting with Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Richards recalled Kushner suggesting Planned Parenthood publicly divest itself from the abortion business, focusing instead on other aspects of women’s health to ensure continued federal funding. It was a tone-deaf suggestion, presuming that the organization saw abortion as ancillary, rather than essential, to its mission. Richards felt like she was “being asked to barter away women’s rights for more money,” and reportedly told Kushner that her organization’s mission was “caring for all [women’s] reproductive needs—including safe and legal abortion.”
That steadfast commitment to abortion—and the full progressive orthodoxy around gender ideology—has kept Planned Parenthood in progressive good graces. There’s seemingly no other viable explanation, for instance, for the temporary restraining order handed down by federal district court judge Indira Talwani, halting the provision defunding Planned Parenthood. It cites no law or legal theory, just a bald assertion of a judicial power overruling a duly-passed Congressional statute and preventing the funding ban from taking effect. The Trump administration has already filed an appeal to dissolve the restraining order, and barring a true travesty of constitutional interpretation, the provision will eventually take effect.
Then the real work will begin. Republicans in Congress should expect another fight when the one-year ban expires, and gird their loins now. Red states in particular should put energy into ensuring women know about real alternatives to Planned Parenthood for health care, particularly if cuts to Medicaid threaten the financial picture of hospitals serving low-income areas.
More broadly, the politics and practice of abortion will continue to evolve. Even if many Planned Parenthood clinics close, self-induced chemical abortions will continue to rise. The relationship between traditional social conservatism and the current administration poses risk as well as opportunity, most notably with a pending report on embryo-destructive forms of assisted reproduction. And, of course, the cultural battle—rebuilding a social understanding about the true meaning of sex, fidelity, and parenthood—remains the biggest task ahead of us.
But for now, the landscape is brighter than many pro-lifers may have had reason to suppose even a year ago. Pro-life groups set their sights on a longtime foe and flexed enough political muscle to ensure their shot was included in a must-pass package in a narrowly-divided Congress. No one should confuse it for winning the war; but for the side that may have doubted whether it would ever win another battle in the fight for life, this victory will taste especially sweet.
