By all means, pro-lifers should highlight the extremism of Democrats who almost unanimously support unlimited taxpayer funding of elective abortion and effectively back a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. They also need to defend a positive pro-life agenda that can garner sufficient public support. If they want to achieve lasting protections for the unborn, pro-lifers should know that more than 75 percent of Americans nationwide have consistently said they support an exception for abortions in the case of rape (which account for 1 percent or less of all abortions). Congressman Henry Hyde, one of the greatest pro-life statesmen, allowed this exception in 1993 in order to save his amendment prohibiting federal Medicaid funding of elective abortions that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. That exception has been part of the federal budget ever since. The lesson then, as now, is that it would have been a grave error to insist that no lives should be protected unless all lives are protected.

In addition to making prudent legislative compromises regarding hard cases, pro-life state officials need to do much more to clarify existing law regarding what ought to be easy cases. Before Roe, every state abortion law included an exception at least to save the life of the mother. Rare but real life-threatening conditions were routinely treated — doctors didn’t wait until a pregnant mother’s life was in imminent peril to act. But since the Dobbs decision, the media and Democrats have whipped up fears that standard treatment for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other life-threatening conditions may be prohibited by pro-life laws. At least some hospital administrators and lawyers have advised doctors to delay life-saving treatments. This is dangerous, and it needs to stop.