Marjorie's Speech on What's Next for the Pro-Life Movement

After the March for Life, More Work Ahead to Save Lives & Serve Moms

Drawing hundreds of thousands of grassroots pro-life advocates from virtually every corner of the nation,…

Abortion Drugs, Planned Parenthood, Trump Admin, Taxpayer Funding, Federal, Dobbs, 2026 Election, 2024 Election

Marjorie’s Speech on What’s Next for the Pro-Life Movement

Following President Trump’s historic signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which after 50 years finally stops forced taxpayer funding of Big Abortion, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser spoke at the annual FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, about the pro-life movement’s victories and the next steps forward in the battle for life. Below are her remarks as prepared for delivery on July 11, 2025.

My friends, it’s good to be back with you in America’s heartland, America’s Family Room, America’s Thanksgiving table! Thank you, Bob Vander Plaats and The FAMiLY Leader for bringing our team OUT of D.C. to Des Moines to this gathering where “We the People” is the beginning of a rally cry for God’s people to embrace His tiniest creations—those He made so wonderfully and fearfully, whom He knit together mothers wombs. And a cry to reject the horrors His children suffer. We the People built a human rights movement over five decades to restore life and dignity to children and mothers.

Dobbs: A Win for the People

Let’s assess where we stand. Three years ago, on June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court delivered a landmark win for human rights in the Dobbs case, restoring the right to protect children in the womb to “We the People” and our elected representatives. NOT unelected judges.

By God’s GRACE and years of work, Roe v. Wade was no more.

It was a credit to the tireless work, marching and praying of so many over the years. I know many of you will never forget that moment, where you were when you heard the news. I know I won’t ….we were gathered with our SBA Pro-Life America family waiting for the last decision of the last day of the long summer SCOTUS term, and finally the GOOD NEWS – at 10:10 in the morning. It was a “God wink.” Or maybe a God NEON sign…..because you know John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it to the full.”

It wouldn’t have happened without a president who understood the importance of confirming judges at all levels who would uphold the Constitution and the right to life, and who didn’t shy away from that fight. You know who that is – our 45^th and 47^th president, Donald Trump.

Many of you were central to victory. Thank you. SBA Pro-Life America is proud to have established the largest pro-life voter contact program in the nation to persuade and turn out millions of key pro-life voters over the years.[1] History proves elections matter. We the People have the power to RIGHT tragic WRONGS. We’ve done so through American history and we are doing so now.

Everyone who said Roe was indestructible missed the story. They underestimated the profound truth of this cause and the strength of the pro-life movement.

Today, nearly half the states have strong pro-life protections.[2]

Here in Iowa, as you know well, thanks to the courage of Governor Kim Reynolds, over 2,000 children a year are protected by the heartbeat law.[3] …Governor Reynolds, thank you, we’re going to miss you!

These laws save lives. We cherish the irreplaceable little boys and girls with us today because of them – intended for this world, with a purpose only they can fulfill. We are learning their names and serving them and their Moms. Like Jacob in Florida, or Neesha’s son in Georgia, saved by their mothers’ courage and laws protecting them.[4] [5]

And there’s more good news. The One Big Beautiful Bill that the president just last week signed into law defunds Big Abortion including the largest one, Planned Parenthood, its largest federal funding stream for the first time ever. That’s FIVE decades in the making.

Planned Parenthood kills 400,000 children a year.[6] And they hardly treat the mothers much better. Even The New York Times did an exposé of their horrific standards – botched procedures, one that ended with a stillbirth, sewage left leaking that had women vomiting in the recovery room. HIV and syphilis tests that were never followed up on. Regularly running out of medications. These are not isolated incidents – they are systemic to the abortion industry which cares about profit. I encourage everyone to look up that story by Katie Benner if you haven’t; it’s titled “Planned Parenthood in Crisis.”[7]

For years, Planned Parenthood has used our tax dollars not to increase health care for the poor, but to grow their share of abortions[8] and “gender transitions,”[9] launch lawsuits aimed at taking down pro-life laws,[10] and to fuel political activism to defeat our pro-life heroes in office.[11]

Meanwhile even the thin veneer of health services they offer is plummeting. Breast exams, pap smears, cancer screenings – they’ve dropped by more than 50%.[12] Even now, faced with existential loss, they still double down on abortion. And find federal judges who will attempt to stop this one-year defund. They will fail and we will go back EVERY SINGLE YEAR we are in power and KEEP THEM out of our tax bills.

Our tax dollars will support neighbors truly in need – not multi-billion-dollar abortion businesses.

A recent headline in The Guardian read, “Planned Parenthood may not survive the Trump administration.”[13] Chuck Schumer says 200 Planned Parenthoods will close their doors – starting with FOUR closures right here in Iowa.[14] What do you think of that? “WE THE PEOPLE” SPOKE!

On top of that, the Supreme Court agreed just two weeks ago: South Carolina and all states have the freedom and right to defund Planned Parenthood –AND THEY ARE.

Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded gravy train is coming to an end. This is our most significant pro-life victory since Dobbs.

It’s also our opportunity to serve women and children better than ever before. They deserve real, comprehensive care, which is readily available at community health centers that outnumber Planned Parenthood 15 to 1 nationwide.[15] Study after study shows women overwhelmingly would choose their children and not abort if they had the hope and concrete support they need.[16] [17] The pro-life movement offers them that.

Two Americas

Yet the battle is far from over.

What many Americans waking up the morning of June 24, 2022 had yet to learn is that, while the single biggest obstacle to pro-life progress for 50 years would be removed, all children were not automatically protected.

As Winston Churchill once said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Here’s a sobering statistic from our research arm, the Charlotte Lozier Institute: abortions have hit at least 1.1 million a year.[18] There are more abortions after Dobbs than before – it is the #1 cause of death in America.

Why? Because abortion activists don’t respect the law or state sovereignty. And they’re working relentlessly to undermine everything the pro-life movement and President Trump have achieved.

We face a reality of two very different Americas. One state protects unborn children through all nine months. A few miles away over the border, the same child can be aborted at any point through all nine months.

Nine states and D.C. have no limits whatsoever on late-term abortions up to the end.[19] And just this month, a new “all-trimester” abortion facility opened its doors in Democrat-controlled Illinois – taking the lives of children up to “roughly” 34 weeks. From here that’s only about an hour and a half away on a non-stop flight.

California Governor Gavin Newsom launched a billboard blitz on pro-life states – advertising for women to come get abortions, paid for with campaign funds, obscenely quoting the Gospel: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[20]

Groups like the ACLU are leading the assault on pro-life state laws with deceptively written ballot measures to insert all-trimester abortion in their constitutions, binding the hands of their legislatures – with deep-pocketed donors bankrolling those efforts. We defeated them in Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska but they’re not done.

Abortion activists – given immunity by “shield laws” in blue states[21] – are flooding every state with dangerous abortion drugs, mailed directly to homes, without medical oversight or safeguards. Not only can they get into the hands of minors, but also abusers – angry boyfriends and ex-husbands who slip them into the drink of a mother who never even considered having an abortion.[22]

The abortion industry lies through their teeth that these drugs are “safer than Tylenol”—a myth that has been debunked, again, by our friends at Charlotte Lozier Institute with peer-reviewed science.[23] They offer them for sale through websites and apps that will ship them out to anyone, “completely free of face-to-face interaction” with a doctor.[24]

And both babies and their mothers suffer. No wonder women are completely unprepared for severe pain, heavy bleeding, and passing the body of an already intricately formed human child – making their own homes the site of unimaginable trauma for years to come.[25] More than one third of women who’ve had abortions report attempting suicide; nearly all of them say their abortion contributed.[26]

The same activists instruct them to deceive their doctors and say they had a natural miscarriage when they land in the ER, putting them at risk for misdiagnosis and delayed treatment.[27]

The abortion industry’s attitude was summed up in a recent investigative article on abortion drug sellers, who leave a note in the package saying: “We wish you the best.”[28]

We wish you the best. And if you need emergency medical intervention to save your life, or help with anything else in your life that brought you to the abortion clinic door– good luck.

Governor Reynolds shared with me how aware and saddened she is about the damage from abortion tourism and abortion drugs here in this state.

President Trump’s FDA has promised a thorough review of the data that the Biden and Obama administrations ignored when rolling back critical safety standards.

Big Abortion’s war on unborn children and their mothers is a national threat, and it requires national leadership to defeat. If we don’t fight back, even the most pro-life state won’t remain that way for long.

How Do We Answer?

What do We the People DO? As we look to the near future, to 2026 and beyond, there is a stark difference between the two major parties on life. We especially need a presidential champion who will take this fight head-on, recognizing there is a constitutional mandate under the 14^th Amendment to act for the equal protection of unborn children.

Now is no time to hide, but to go on offense. In 2024 we defeated the most pro-abortion presidential ticket America has ever seen. We halted the radical abortion agenda at the federal level, for now. And now the latest Gallup poll, the big survey that comes out every summer, had good news that goes against the entire corporate media narrative of the past few years about the Dobbs victory: Pro-life identification specifically among young adults ages 18 to 29 is up 11 points, while support for abortion being legal in all circumstances has dropped 19 points.[29]

In America, where you live should never determine whether you live. The fact that the USA, the land of the free and home of the brave, is one of only eight nations in the world, including Communist China and Vietnam,[30] that tolerates abortion for any reason up until the very end is a NATIONAL SHAME.

Working shoulder to shoulder, We the People have the power to restore the blessings of liberty and the unalienable right to life. We can turn this story of a divided America around into one of triumph. And it begins right here in Iowa, with the Republican caucuses. My friends, I know you are very well aware of your crucial role in that process and in the future direction of the nation. WHAT A POINT OF ENCOURAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION that Iowans will be decisive in how the GOP approaches the issue of abortion in the next elections. We must demand that ANYONE SEEKING OUR VOTE live up to the promise the party has made in platform after platform to protect unborn children nationally. Today I am calling on all voters to send that clear message at this pivotal moment in the greatest human rights battle of our time. Thank you and God bless you.

[1] https://sbaprolife.org/voter-contact-program

[2] https://sbaprolife.org/lifesavinglaws

[3] https://sbaprolife.org/lifesavinglaws

[4] https://sbaprolife.org/latest-news/jacobs-story-the-dobbs-decision-saved-this-little-boys-life

[5] https://sbaprolife.org/latest-news/neeshas-story-because-of-dobbs-hes-alive-and-loved

[6] https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2023-24-annual-report/

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/planned-parenthood-clinics.html

[8] https://lozierinstitute.org/new-peer-reviewed-article-planned-parenthood-abortion-drugs-major-drivers-of-u-s-abortions/

[9] https://www.thefp.com/p/how-did-planned-parenthood-become

[10] https://sbaprolife.org/newsroom/press-releases/desperate-leading-pro-life-group-slams-planned-parenthood-for-suing-trump-admin

[11] https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/pressroom/statement-from-planned-parenthood-action-fund-on-presidential-election-results#:~:text=Planned%20Parenthood%20advocacy%20and%20political%20organizations%20made%20a%20record%2Dbreaking%20%2469.5%20million%20investment%20during%20the%202024%20election%20cycle.

[12] https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2023-24-annual-report/