Four years ago today, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Court returned to the states and to the American people the authority to deliberate and legislate on the question of abortion. What had been imposed nationwide by judicial fiat for nearly five decades once again became subject to democratic accountability.
The fruit of that ruling is already visible. A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that abortion restrictions enacted in fourteen states following Dobbs were associated with more than 22,000 additional live births beyond what would otherwise have been expected.
These are not abstractions. They are more than twenty-two thousand children who have been given the chance to draw breath in this world, children whose lives were protected because the constitutional order was restored and because voters and legislators in those states chose to safeguard the unborn.
This is the day the Lord has given us. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Many of our parishes may not mark this anniversary with special liturgical note. That does not prevent us, the faithful, especially Catholics who have carried the pro-life cause through decades of prayer, public witness, sidewalk counseling, political engagement, and quiet perseverance, from pausing to give thanks.
The pro-life movement did not begin with Dobbs, and it will not end with it. Yet it is right to recognize when seeds planted in faithfulness bear visible fruit. Constant lament without moments of gratitude can make the burden heavier than it needs to be. We are permitted, indeed obliged, to celebrate the goodness of God when real lives are spared and real families are formed.
Gratitude, however, is not an invitation to rest. The Dobbs decision did not settle the abortion question for the entire country. It returned the matter to the proper arena of self-government. That reality carries an important lesson. The protection of human life does not occur in a political vacuum. In a constitutional republic, free and fair elections remain the bedrock through which citizens govern themselves and hold public officials accountable.
When elections genuinely reflect the will of the people, the faithful are given a clearer opportunity to bear public witness to the Kingdom of God within the structures of the kingdom of man. We render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar while rendering to God what belongs to God. The work of defending human dignity therefore includes not only prayer, service, and persuasion, but also the often unglamorous responsibilities of citizenship.
Those who celebrate the lives preserved after Dobbs should also recognize how those protections came to exist. Laws were debated. Legislators were elected. Judges were appointed. Citizens participated. Democratic institutions functioned. The constitutional order worked as it was designed to work.
On this anniversary, then, we do two things at once. We give thanks for the lives already preserved and for the democratic space that was reclaimed. And we recommit ourselves to the patient work of faithful citizenship: defending the integrity of elections, supporting candidates and policies that honor the dignity of every human life, and helping to build a culture that welcomes both the child in the womb and the mother who carries that child.
More than twenty-two thousand children are a reminder that public decisions have human consequences. Gratitude is therefore appropriate. So is perseverance.
Deo Gratias.
Endnote
- Sarah O. Bell et al., “US Abortion Bans and Fertility,” Journal of the American Medical Association 333, no. 15 (2025): 1324–1332, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2024.28527.