2016 saw losses and victories for the pro-life movement. The biggest loss was million-plus lives lost in the womb thanks to surgical, medical and drug-induced abortions.

But our movement also saw victories. Perhaps the biggest was when voters blocked strongly pro-abortion Hillary Clinton from the White House and elected Donald Trump instead, in part because he promised to end federal funding of abortion and to nominate a pro-life U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Here is The Stream’s list of some of the most consequential losses and victories this year.

Losses

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Texas’ laws mandating that abortion centers increase their standards of care. Specifically, the laws required abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, as well as requiring abortion centers to raise their standards to meet those of outpatient surgical centers. The laws had closed about half of Texas’ abortion centers.

The Court’s decision provided legal justification for lower courts to knock down similar standards in other states, including most recently the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to overturn an admitting privileges law in that state.

A number of federal courts blocked state efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, for example one in Ohio and another in Utah.

The U.S. Supreme Court also refused to hear a pharmacy owner’s challenge to a Washington State requirement that the pharmacy provide abortion-inducing drugs to customers.

Illinois enacted a law requiring pro-life pregnancy care centers to refer women for abortions. That law is being challenged by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of pregnancy resource centers in the state. (Disclosure: One of the plaintiffs representing the centers is the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, which is a client of this reporter.)

In January, President Barack Obama vetoed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood.

President Obama’s administration recently finalized a rule that effectively bans states from blocking Planned Parenthood’s access to Title X program funds. (Title X gives states money for “family planning services,” including abortion-inducing drugs and devices.) The rule was created after many states attempted to defund the abortion giant thanks to videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood engaged in illegal abortions to illegally profit off of fetal harvesting.

California’s liberal Catholic Governor, Jerry Brown, signed a law written by Planned Parenthood that could jail pro-life journalists.

For the first time, the Democratic Party’s platform formally endorsed repealing the Hyde Amendment. In effect since 1980, the amendment has been annually approved in a bipartisan manner, and one analysis estimates it has saved over two million children from abortion.

Planned Parenthood, which spends millions in each election cycle to elect pro-abortion politicians, gave its first endorsement in its 100-year history. The endorsement went to Hillary Clinton.

A Houston, Texas, grand jury chose to not indict Planned Parenthood over fetal harvesting charges. Instead, the jury indicted investigators David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for alleged lawbreaking. (On the good news front, those charges were dropped over the summer.)

The abortion industry and its allies used misleading rhetoric to create panic about the risk of microcephaly to the unborn children of women who contracted the Zika virus. That rhetoric likely was a reason that people across the country tended to support late-term abortions when the mother has contracted the Zika virus.

Victories

As mentioned above, the Center for Medical Progress’ Daleiden and Merritt saw charges against them dropped.

The U.S. Supreme Court sent to lower courts the Obama administration’s mandate that religious non-profits violate their employees’ consciences and participate in insuring contraceptives and abortifacients. Pro-life leaders said the decision was a partial victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, Oklahoma Wesleyan University and other plaintiffs..

A federal court rejected an American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) lawsuit meant to force a Catholic hospital chain to provide abortions and contraceptives.

As outlined in this Washington Post piece, South Dakota, South Carolina and Ohio passed bans on abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation were signed in 2016, making 18 states with such bans. Additionally, at least two states lengthened abortion waiting periods, and Indiana banned abortion if the mother was getting one because of the race or sex of the child, or because the child had Down Syndrome.

Several states have banned dismemberment abortions, which are used in 95 percent of second-trimester abortions. While most of the measures have been blocked by courts, and even if upheld would still allow abortions in the second trimester, supporters such as Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R-OK) say the effort will educate the public on the realities of abortion.

A Created Equal-commissioned study in Canada found that graphic images of abortion victims modestly swayed people’s views of abortion towards supporting life. Graphic images of abortion victims are controversial both inside and outside the pro-life movement, so understanding their effectiveness is important. Additionally, the study noted, people’s personal views on abortion are often correlated to supporting pro-life policies. Thus, the study could have a secondary effect of leading to pro-life policies, at least in the area in which it was conducted.

Another study found that about two-thirds of babies born at 22 and 23 weeks’ gestation survive to leave the hospital if proper medical care is provided. This German study further weakens the abortion industry’s argument for the alleged necessity of late-term abortions — the earliest birth at which a baby has survived is prior to 21 weeks’ gestation — and is yet another rebuttal to the idea that abortion until the ninth month is an acceptable political and moral perspective.

In the third and last debate during the 2016 general election presidential campaign, Trump said about late-term abortions, “I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

Trump said that in front of an estimated 72 million viewers. Millions of Americans also watched Mike Pence defend unborn life in the vice presidential debate with Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA). (For more from the author of “The Pro-Life Cause in 2016: Some Bad Losses, some Hopeful Victories” please click HERE)

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