STUDENTS FOR LIFE PRESIDENT Kristan Hawkins sat typing in the bedroom of her family camper in Florida on Jan. 20, 2021. She was writing a speech about the state of the pro-life movement to give at an upcoming event, but sounds from the other room distracted her: Her husband and oldest child were watching President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech in the living area, and she could hear everything.

“President Biden … spoke eloquently about uniting America and how we need to end the uncivil war and that he was going to be a president for all Americans,” she said when I spoke with her the next day. But she had seen the administration’s pro-abortion agenda on the campaign trail. “I don’t have any hope that those words will actually be put into action.”

The first few days of Biden’s presidency confirmed pro-life fears that the incoming administration would not be friendly to unborn Americans. The Presidential Inaugural Committee listed Planned Parenthood among its contributors. Two days later, on the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, President Joe Biden released a statement pledging to codify a woman’s “right” to abortion into law.

Less than a week later, Biden signed a presidential memorandum revoking President Donald Trump’s Mexico City Policy that prevented federal funds from going to international abortion providers. That same memorandum also removed the United States from the Geneva Consensus, an international pro-life declaration, and initiated the process of reversing Trump’s Title X rule that kept abortion providers from getting family planning funding.

But a year that brought little recourse for pro-life progress on the federal level also became a hallmark year for pro-life victories at other levels of government. Pro-life groups made headway in state legislatures and celebrated as Trump’s long-lasting victory of pro-life judges and Supreme Court justices brought victories in the courts. At the same time, the events of the year increased tensions on the issue: Abortion advocates are worried and pro-lifers hopeful as they mark Roe’s 49th anniversary, wondering if the decision will see its 50th.

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute published a report in April calling the 2021 legislative session the most “damaging” to the pro-abortion cause in decades. By that time, states had introduced 536 pro-life bills and 61 had become law. By the same time in 2011, the previous record-holding year, states had only enacted 42 pro-life laws.

Arkansas in March passed one of the strongest protections for the unborn in any state. That law allows abortions if a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life but does not allow abortions in cases of rape or incest. In signing the bill, Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged that it defies Supreme Court precedent, “but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law,” he said.

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