50-State Guide To Engaging the Fight for Life

We at the ACLJ have worked for decades toward the goal of having the egregious U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Roe v. Wade overturned. This decision, fatally flawed in numerous fundamental ways, served for nearly 50 years to sanction the taking of more than 63 million innocent preborn lives in the United States. On June 24, 2022, we celebrated when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. With this opinion, Roe v. Wade and its follow-on cases were overturned.

It was the end of a decades-long effort to right an egregious wrong and cause for celebration.

But it also signaled the beginning of an even bigger and potentially even more important fight in all 50 states. It’s a fight for life that we have now fully engaged and to which we are fully committed for the long run.

With its decision in Dobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively returned to each of the states an appropriate authority to regulate and limit abortions within each if its respective borders. It has long been our position that every level of American government has a sacred duty to use its authority to provide all human life with the full and robust protection of the law. That duty is now once again within the purview of each state, and the realization of the goal to protect life at the state level is now at the forefront of our efforts for life.

We have prepared a comprehensive legal memo that provides a snapshot of the abortion laws in each state at the time Dobbs was issued. As you will see, some states were prepared in advance for this situation and had already passed laws to protect life – sometimes known as “trigger laws” – that would take effect as soon as Roe fell—a possibility that has now become reality. Other states are moving to act now. Still others remain hostile to life and are in fact moving to enshrine a right to abortion into their state constitution or state law. It is this expansive fabric of state laws that we have been preparing to engage, and at which we now aim our efforts. This memo is reflective of the situation as it was when Dobbs was decided, and we are staying up to date on fast-moving developments across the country.

This legal memo is the first step, as today we launch a 50-state campaign to defend life and defeat abortion in each state nationwide.

We call on states to enact robust protections for life, and to vigorously oppose efforts to weaken those protections. It will not be a quick or easy fight, but it is one that literally carries with it life-and-death ramifications. It is also a fight we’ve been longing for, building toward, and are fully prepared to engage.

Please join us in this new front in the fight to defend life. Sign our petition, and stay tuned to ACLJ.org for updates on the latest developments across the country.