The pro-life community celebrated breakthrough victories in three states on Election Day even as they mourned losses in seven others, prompting one leader to call for “even greater determination” in pressing on for the cause of the unborn. The victories in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota were the first statewide wins for the pro-life cause since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and sparked a pro-choice backlash. Prior to Election Day, the pro-choice community had won in all six states where abortion was on the ballot, including in such conservative strongholds as Ohio, Kansas, and Kentucky.

In Nebraska, a proposal that would have amended the state constitution to guarantee “a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability” failed 51.3 to 48.7 percent. At the same time, a pro-life proposal designed to protect the state’s 12-week abortion law passed 55.3 to 44.7 percent. That latter initiative amended the Nebraska Constitution so that it states: “Unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.”

In South Dakota, an initiative that would have guaranteed the right to an abortion in the state constitution as part of a trimester framework lost 59.5 percent to 40.5 percent.

The Florida initiative, though, received the most nationwide attention due to the state’s prominence and population. Amendment 4, as it was called, would have overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban and would have added language to the state constitution protecting abortion. Needing 60 percent of the vote to pass, it received 57 percent.

“By rejecting Amendment 4, Floridians saw through the lies and deceptions of the abortion industry-backed effort to legalize late-term abortion, remove parental consent, and open the door to force taxpayer-funded abortions,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

“Despite being outspent by pro-abort groups by 8:1, the courageous leadership of @GovRonDeSantis and the intense focus of thousands of pro-life Floridians have written a new playbook for how to fight and WIN!” said Lila Rose, president of Live Action.

Rose later added of the victories in Nebraska and elsewhere: “Lives will be saved.”

Pro-life leader Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said Election Day was a mixed bag for pro-lifers, with voters in seven states adding language to their state constitutions protecting abortion. Those states were Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Montana and Nevada.

“The pro-life movement in the United States needs to realize that we are in big, big trouble,” Mohler said on his podcast, The Briefing. “I want to be very clear about what that trouble is, and I want to be equally clear about the fact that we have to meet that with an even greater determination to speak up for and contend for the unborn in the womb.”

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, Mohler said, it was easy for voters and politicians to label themselves “pro-life” in the abstract.

“It turns out that Americans weren’t nearly as pro-life as they said, or to put it a different way, far fewer Americans were consistently pro-life when it started to matter, as it did in a big way in 2022,” he said.

Members of the pro-life community, he said, “joined this as a cause because we believe that the sanctity and dignity of human life is a moral priority.”

“We’re about to find out who are the fair-weather friends of the pro-life movement because they’re going to fly away very quickly,” he said, adding: “This is going to be a true test for Christian institutions, Christian denominations, and Christian congregations.”

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