At the 2026 Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Gala, Marjorie Dannenfelser said a “states-only” strategy stands no chance against the abortion lobby’s national plan to legalize all-trimester abortion in all 50 states. Recognizing the impact the next two elections will have on whether the pro-abortion or pro-life side prevails, she committed SBA to investing $160 million for the midterms and the next presidential election.

Her remarks as prepared for delivery:

I think you can feel it. We are at a pivotal moment for the future of the pro-life movement in the United States. The events of the next few years will determine whether we as a country will recognize the dignity and humanity of the unborn child–so fearfully and wonderfully and intentionally made– or whether we will see abortion continue to spread and increase throughout all fifty states… turning our great nation into what Mildred Jefferson feared: “just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live.” 

These years will determine whether the Declaration of Independence — recognizing the God-given and inalienable right to life – will guide the future of this country, or whether our founding document will become a dead letter. 

There is no in-between. As Abraham Lincoln, drawing on the words of Scripture, reminded us: a house divided against itself cannot stand. On human rights questions like these – questions of who counts as a person, and who deserves the law’s protection – America will end up either all one way or all the other. Either we will stop the spread of abortion and its life ending, life-changing, culture-crushing effects … and place it on the path to extinction, or the abortion lobby will push it forward until it is legal in all fifty states. 

The other side is fully committed to doing so. They are powerful, organized, and united. They have a plan, and, truth be told, they’re already well on their way to accomplishing that plan.  

Even before Dobbs was decided, they laid the groundwork for abortion drugs by mail, changing federal regulations to let activists in blue states send abortion drugs to anyone (male, female, pregnant, not pregnant, alienated boyfriend or ex-husband, sex trafficker) ANYONE who fills out an online form, regardless of state pro-life protections. 

Partly as a result, the number of abortions since Dobbs has gone up, not down. Let me repeat: there are more abortions in the United States today than there were the Roe v. Wade was overturned. Now, more than 1.1 million abortions occur in this country every single year.    

This isn’t just in deep-blue states. The flow of these drugs means that the laws of pro-life states have been nullified – not by the courts, but by federal inaction. I don’t mean symbolically nullified, or theoretically nullified. Really nullified. Practically nullified. 

The victories that Dobbs enabled have been all-but-completely erased already. According to the best estimates available, more than 90,000 abortions occur each year just in states that protect the unborn throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Five of these states  (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Dakota) have more abortions within their borders today than they did under Roe. The door that Dobbs opened legally is being slammed shut in practice. If the other side takes power nationally, that door will be shut and locked for at least a generation. Their plan is not secret. The bill has been written; it has been voted on. It has been promised and sponsored and voted for by almost every elected Democrat in Congress. They are committed to eliminating the filibuster in order to vote on it when they are in power.  They are aiming to finish the project they have already partly accomplished – making the brutal death of America’s littlest children available at any time, and for any reason, in all fifty states.  This is an American tragedy for women and children– planned, in process and accelerating toward us. 

A states-only strategy will not defeat this threat. It is incapable of countering their unity and focus; it forfeits the moral power of the pro-life cause in favor of narrow proceduralism; and it leaves women in need alone  and countless to children to die painful, late-term deaths in states like New York and California, Colorado and Illinois. The strategy does not work and it cannot work. It has never worked: no human rights issue in the history of the country has ever been solved this way. The only difference here is that the strategy has been tried and has failed in record time.   

If we cannot match the fervor and intensity of the abortion lobby – if we cannot meet them and beat them in a national debate, not about popular sovereignty but about the dignity of the human person, then we will lose. If the Republican Party fully follows the administration’s states only strategy and abandons its commitments to pro-life action at the national level, then the movement as we know it is finished. 

The only thing keeping that at bay is the impressive strength and resolve of pro-life champions in the House and Senate. The hopes of the movement, and the fate of millions of lives, rest in large part on the shoulders of the Senators who spoke to you here tonight and Speaker Johnson and the great number of prolife stalwarts in the House. They constitute the best – perhaps the only – hope of revitalizing a national movement, in favor of life. Their success or failure over the next few years – in their campaigns, in their legislation, and in their efforts to shape the future of the party and its presidential candidate in 2028  – will make the difference between a nation that goes all one way, and a nation that goes all the other. 

When Abraham Lincoln gave his House Divided speech, it was in the context of a Senate campaign in the midterms of 1858. At that time his assessment was bleak and he was depressed: as he saw it the nation was tending much more towards becoming all slave than all free.  

But the elections of the next two years would end up fulfilling his prophetic words. The nation did become all one way. Slavery was set on the path to extinction. As a result of those elections, the next decade would see slavery abolished and Congress, through the Fourteenth Amendment, granted the power and duty to ensure the right to life and that the equal protection of the laws would be guaranteed in all fifty states.  

We have a similarly monumental task before us today. Our situation is similarly dire. But the tools of democracy we use are the same.  And our opportunities are similarly great.  

Which way we end up going will depend on what we do over the next two years. It will depend on whether we can preserve and increase the number of champions we have in Congress. It will depend on the support we can give to leaders, like the Senators here tonight, who understand what time it is. And it will depend on whether the next presidential nominee can, like Lincoln, push forward a national vision or whether we choose instead to abandon the founding principles of our nation and of the Republican Party. 

These are the fights that we at SBA have committed ourselves to over the next few years. And they are fights that will require the help of everyone here in this room tonight. Time is short, but our task can be accomplished. Across these two election cycles, we plan to spend $160 million to try and accomplish it.  

WE NEED YOU. 

The pro-life movement did not survive nearly fifty years of Roe v. Wade only to let itself be cast into the wilderness as soon as Roe falls. Majorities and supermajorities of the country and of the party agree with us on the rationale for the tasks that lie most immediately before us. They reject the radicalism of the pro-abortion agenda. They support protections for babies who can feel the pain of being ripped apart. They certainly agree that women deserve actual medical care and if anyone is to get their hands on lethal drugs, they should at least have to see a doctor first.  

So thank you to all of you who are here tonight. With your help, with God’s grace, with the support of the American people and the leadership of the heroes in this room, I am confident that we can succeed. We have to. It’s a matter of life and death.  

THANK YOU! 

These are not abstract evils we’re fighting against, and it’s not a vague principle we’re fighting for. We’re fighting on behalf of real babies, and real women.  Of course their welfare is interconnected. 

I’d like to turn your attention now to a video showing the story of one of those women, and her experience with chemical abortion drugs.