The pro-life movement has been extraordinarily successful in reducing abortions to historic lows and closing a record number of abortion clinics, many of which violate the numerous pro-life states laws pro-life groups have passed to protect women and unborn children. But the pro-life movement has had a difficult time in the almost 43 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down in getting the nation’s highest court to overturn the disastrous decision that essentially allowed virtually unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy.

The problem for the pro-life movement in getting judges on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe is that it’s difficult to pinpoint whether the nominee will actually overturn Roe. Justices like Kennedy, Souter and O’Connor for example, were thought to be by-the-book constitutionalists who would overturn the Supreme Court case that was the biggest overreach in history. But they turned out to be supporters of Roe who rejected previous opportunities to overturn the pro-abortion case.

And with every presidential election, Republican presidential candidates promise to do a better job at getting judges on the nation’s highest court who would be more open to reversing Roe, which could be just one vote away from being overturned.

Now, Ted Cruz is the latest pro-life presidential candidate to say he would appoint the kid of judges the pro-life movement needs to finally begin the process of providing legal protection for unborn children from abortion. As Bloomberg News reports:

Ted Cruz says Republicans have “an abysmal record” when it comes to picking Supreme Court justices, and it is something the Texas senator promises to rectify if he’s elected president. Click here to sign up for daily pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com Cruz, who argued cases before the Supreme Court as the solicitor general of his state and has taught law school classes on the art of presenting cases to the high court, told Bloomberg Politics in an exclusive interview in Iowa on Monday that his party has a knack for picking eventual heretics who side with liberals on divisive issues. “Unlike many of the other candidates, I will be willing to spend the capital to ensure that every Supreme Court nominee that I put on the court is a principled judicial conservative,” Cruz said. His goal? To match Democrats’ “nearly perfect record” of picking justices who vote reliably with their movement. “The Republicans have an abysmal record. We bat about .500,” he said. “About half of the nominees Republicans have put on the court have not just occasionally disappointed but have turned into absolute disasters.”

Cruz cited Scalia, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, and Samuel Alito as the kind of judges he would pick and Thomas and Rehnquist are noted proponents of overturning Roe while Alito has already voted to overturn a high court decision striking down a ban on partial-birth abortions.

So who would Cruz want to see as a nominee?

Driving east in his car after a campaign stop near Iowa City, the accomplished Supreme Court litigator and former Texas solicitor general said he’d only settle for “rock-ribbed conservatives” who have “a long paper trail as principled conservative jurists.” His ideal contender would be someone who has refused to bow to pressure, rather than a “stealth candidate” without a demonstrable conservative record.

The coming judicial battles over Supreme Court nominees are huge and the next president could determine the direction of the Supreme Court on abortion for decades to come:

The Supreme Court is poised for vacancies in the years ahead. Come Election Day, three out of nine justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy) will be over 80 years old. A fourth, Stephen Breyer, will be 78. The average Supreme Court retirement age is 78.7, according to a 2006 Harvard study. The next president could end up nominating several justices, making the high court stakes enormous in the 2016 election, particularly given the now familiar 5-to-4 split on monumental issues like voting rights, campaign finance, gun rights, and the role of religion in public life.

The 2016 election will be a crucial battle for pro-life voters. If they want to see any chance of ending abortion, they need to vote for a pro-life candidate and work overtime to defeat Hillary Clinton.