As Roe v. Wade turns 49 this month, the Supreme Court may soon overturn or significantly modify its abortion precedents, restoring the American people’s power to protect unborn children and their mothers in the law. This is a dream decades in the making—but even an unequivocal win will represent the start, not the end, of the pro-life movement’s work to rebuild a culture of life.

In a post-Roe America, each state will resume a debate that was unjustly stifled for two generations concerning how we protect the most vulnerable. American democracy will work as designed, with the people, through their elected representatives, determining the laws that govern them. Pro-life advocates must take the initiative in every state, and future pro-life presidents and members of Congress must act to defend life.

States have been at the forefront of America’s pro-life revolution. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute recently called 2021 “the most devastating anti-abortion state legislative session in decades”—a peculiar way to describe life-saving laws. By October, more than 100 pro-life provisions had been enacted across 19 states, including some of the most ambitious protections ever passed.