How to Be Pro-Life in 2025

what pro-lifers can learn from democrats in the wake of the election

The other day, someone in my wider social circle asked why the pro-life movement still existed.

Didn’t it get its way, after all? Roe vs. Wade overturned? A Republican president? Women dying in the streets from sepsis? Wasn’t this our goal?

I found the first part of the question fair, I suppose—what are the new pro life community’s goals?

But the pro-life community isn’t a community at all. It’s millions of people with a different view and vision, all stuffed together under one umbrella and not really happy to be together. The pro-life movement is far more diverse than any pro-choice think piece on Slate makes it out to be. It’s Christians and atheists and rebels and racists and pacifists and future saints and current sinners and people who voted for all kinds of people. I know plenty of pro-lifers who voted for both major candidates this time around.

That makes that question hard to answer. What are our goals? And what should they be?

Because abortion is still taking place. In many states, practically nothing has changed after Roe. And in the ones where it has, people are racing to the voting booths to put things back how they were. The days of safe, legal, and rare are behind us—the voting public seems to want immediately, free, and under any circumstance.

It’s sort of like if you start talking to a pro-choice person about the exceptions they claim they want. We’re just afraid for the life of the mother, they’ll often say—probably in good faith. If you follow that up with gently pointing out that all states have exceptions for the life of the mother, they quickly pivot. Well, the laws aren’t clear enough. Then you show them the laws. Well, it shouldn’t be up to a doctor, it should be up to the mother. Then you ask them what guidelines there should be on that. None, they say, every time I’ve had this very real conversation. None, because if it’s none of our business. It’s whatever the woman wants to do.¹

The goalposts will continue to move because the goal is an immoral goal: the right to take innocent human life. That’s a politically unpalatable thing to say but it doesn’t make it less true.

The pro-life movement, however, doesn’t tend to care about being politically unpalatable. And while I’ve agreed with that for a long time, I’m starting to wonder if we need a more substantial shift. Not a shift towards compromising our morals—compassion and confusion are not the same thing—but a shift towards being more willing to work alongside those with whom we disagree strongly. I’ve written for a long time about the need to work with modern, secular feminists but I think that really needs to be even more central to our pro-life goals moving forward. Because what we’re doing isn’t working, politically. It just isn’t. Sure, there were some bright spots, but pro-life policies were mostly shut down hard on Election Day.

Are we ever going to reach that dreamland where abortion is seen as unthinkable in the eyes of Americans? Maybe not. Probably not. But it isn’t all about the dreamland. For instance, I frequently wince at pro-life laws that aren’t, in my view, strong enough. But it’s not immoral to vote for a law that is more pro-life, even if it’s not perfectly pro-life.

“When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.” - Saint John Paul the Great, Evangelium Vitae

So in 2025, how do we continue to be pro-life? What should be our aims? I would suggest we start taking a look at what we could achieve that unites both modern and Christian feminists, and join hands on what we can join hands on. Here are a few things I’d begin by focusing on.