The pro-life movement’s disastrous post-Roe pivot

President Donald Trump might go down in history as the best thing that ever happened to legal abortion in the United States.

That’s because Trump, by muzzling pro-life leaders and championing states’ rights on abortion following his efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, cultivated a political environment in which the practice of legal abortion has flourished. Two-and-a-half years following the fall of Roe, abortion rights have never been more protected in all but a handful of states, and public support for legal abortion has never been stronger.

Meanwhile, the political influence of the pro-life movement is at an all-time low. Its leaders have been cowed by a popular president who frequently thumbs his nose at pro-life orthodoxy, and its political strategy has lacked the savvy necessary to succeed in post-Roe America. Even within...