What 2026 and 2028 Mean for Pro-Lifers

I n the last pre-election edition of National Review magazine, Charles C. W. Cooke wrote an excellent piece looking ahead to the stakes of the 2028 election, which far outstrip those of 2026 (though, as he noted, 2026 obviously sets the table for 2028’s outcomes). Central to Cooke’s 2028 fear is the Democratic desire to break the norms of our current political order: abolishing the Senate filibuster, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as new states with four new Democratic senators, and packing the Supreme Court. It can only happen with a post-2028 Democratic trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House.

I want to talk about the policy end toward which these planned acts of norm-destruction are ordered as a means. Among the foremost goals for Democrats in 2028 is to reverse or negate Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and to reinstate a nationwide right to abortion in federal law. Pro-lifers are stuck in the world of Dobbs and are not looking ahead to this likely, upcoming fight.

Democrats certainly have policy goals other than abortion that they would love to accomplish legislatively or through the courts after 2028. They want more taxes, gun control, Green New Deals, USAID frippery, the restoration of the DEI/affirmative action regime in corporate America and academia, and more. A filibuster-less Senate and a compliant 13-, 15-, or 876-member (Why not?) Supreme Court will help them to achieve those things.

But there were only two causes for which Democrats actually held votes to break the filibuster during their most recent, Biden-era trifecta: to change federal elections law (as a means to further political victories, not a true policy goal itself); and to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act. The WHPA would have reinstated the key provisions of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as a federal statute, mandating broadly legal abortion nationwide by overriding any state laws to the contrary. Abortion was therefore the only policy for which Democrats were willing to test their caucus on the filibuster, and the only two Democrats to oppose it, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, are no longer senators.

Democrats hate the Dobbs decision, obviously, but I think conservatives don’t quite appreciate how much they hate it. It was the single worst policy defeat — as opposed to a political defeat — that Democrats had experienced in decades. Roe was the paradigm for the left’s Court-led march of American culture toward radical expressive individualism and away from Judeo-Christian cultural, ethical, and familial norms. Reversing it undermines that entire project. What standing does, say, Obergefell v. Hodges have, if one applies the Dobbs analysis to it? If a genie gave Democrats three wishes, they would use two to reverse Dobbs, just to be certain.

It is true that the left has largely maintained nationwide abortion since 2022. Most critically, President Biden’s FDA loosened restrictions on mifepristone to prescribe and ship the drug nationwide, Comstock Act be damned. This expansion of mifepristone has been chiefly responsible for abortion numbers going significantly up, not down, since Dobbs. Democratic victories in state-level, abortion-legalizing ballot initiatives have scared Trump away (thus far) from reversing Biden’s mifepristone policies.

Nonetheless, over the long run, Dobbs remains an existential threat to this most precious of all progressive political priorities. The winds of public opinion shift faster than we sometimes appreciate. In 2008, gay marriage was political poison that even progressive California rejected; seven years later, it was the law of the land. Americans are largely pro-abortion — for now. If Dobbs stays on the books, abortion law can and will become responsive to popular will over the decades. Roe ensured that abortion was securely legal regardless of what Americans thought about it; today, the situation is more tenuous.

I fear that pro-lifers are not clearly thinking ahead to the world of 2029, should Democrats prevail in 2028. Pro-lifers such as Princeton’s Robert George were disappointed by Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers’s pre-election turn on the abortion issue. So was I — and I question whether this was even a wise decision politically. But, as the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Mike Fragoso has pointed out, Rogers will likely still be a reliable vote for GOP Supreme Court picks, and his “abortion is a state issue” approach would ensure a vote against restoring Roe legislatively, and certainly against breaking the filibuster to accomplish it. Abdul El-Sayed would obviously be a disaster on all of these points.

The fact that Rogers, Michele Tafoya, Lisa Murkowski, or Susan Collins do not want to vote for federal legislation to limit abortion — something that has almost no possibility of passage in a world where the Senate filibuster exists — is irrelevant by comparison. Collins and Murkowski were unreliable votes on Trump’s Supreme Court picks, but even they voted with Republicans against abolishing the filibuster for the WHPA.

I hate the fact that Republican politicians feel the need to rhetorically betray the pro-life cause during tough elections, but the reality is that we could face a generational loss without such allies, however fickle. I don’t want Roe restored for another half-century — and that is the outcome we could very likely face in 2029.