(CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY) — As pro-life advocates journey to Washington, D.C., for the third post-Roe March for Life, the incoming president of the march believes “there’s a lot of reasons for hope” for the pro-life movement to continue scoring legislative and cultural wins going forward.
The 52nd annual March for Life is scheduled for Friday, Jan. 24, and it will be the last one led by Jeanne Mancini, the outgoing March for Life Education and Defense Fund president.
The group’s president-elect, Jennie Bradley Lichter, will take the helm on Feb. 1, about one week after the march.
Lichter — a Catholic mother of three, a lawyer, and a longtime advocate for the sanctity of life — has been active in the pro-life movement since her childhood. She told CNA that growing up, she witnessed the example of her mother and her father, Gerard Bradley, a retired pro-life Notre Dame law professor who advocated for the unborn.
“I grew up in a committed pro-life family,” Lichter, the eldest of eight siblings, said.
“My parents raised us to know that every life is precious,” she added. “And they really lived that [belief] by example.”
Lichter told CNA she has been a daily Mass attendee since she was a teenager and has “always tried to prioritize daily prayer and remaining in the posture of discernment and openness to the Lord’s will.”
That discernment, Lichter said, “is what brought me to say yes to making this career shift” to become the president of the March for Life.
“We’re all called to put our lives at the Lord’s service,” Lichter added.
A longtime advocate for life
Lichter, who attended her first March for Life as a freshman in college in 2001, has worked for the Family Research Council, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump’s administration, and The Catholic University of America. In those positions, she has promoted religious liberty and pro-life values.
At the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., where she went to work after graduating from the University of Notre Dame, she was a research assistant, focusing on religious liberty and pro-life issues.
“I fell in love with doing that kind of work and I saw how much good … people were doing here in Washington,” Lichter said.
Lichter later earned a master’s degree in theology at the University of Cambridge in England and then obtained her law degree at Harvard Law School, after which she worked as a law clerk and then a lawyer. As a lawyer, she helped design litigation to challenge the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
In 2014, she began working on the legal team for the Archdiocese of Washington, and in late 2017, she took a job at the Department of Justice during the Trump administration, where she said she “helped launch the religious liberty task force.”
In 2019, she was moved to the White House to work on the Domestic Policy Council, where she advised on “a whole lot of issues” including religious freedom, faith-based issues, and pro-life policies.
After Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020, Lichter served as legal counsel for The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and helped launch The Guadalupe Project, which provides resources to expectant mothers on the campus, both faculty and students.
The goal of the project, she said, is to “support moms and their babies on campus” by “making Catholic University the best possible place to bring children into the world.”
Marching for life post-Roe
The first-ever March for Life was on Jan. 22, 1974, one year after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that every state must legalize abortion.
Two and a half years after that ruling was overturned, Lichter said: “We’re “going to keep on showing up in Washington and we’re going to keep on marching until every baby is … protected under the law and every mom is supported.”
“This issue is not over,” Lichter said. “Pro-life people are still really motivated, still showing up in Washington at a very chilly time of year.”
”The big legal goal was the takedown of Roe v. Wade,” she said, but added that the ultimate goal is to “make abortion unthinkable” and ensure mothers “feel supported and have the resources they need.”
“[The March for Life] is a hopeful day, it is a joyful day, there is a lot of energy there, [and] there’s nothing else like it in our country or in the world anywhere,” Lichter said, calling the march “a shot of energy for the pro-life movement every year [so that we] can go back sort of renewed for the fight.”
Lichter noted that the March for Life began its state marches prior to the court overturning Roe v. Wade. She emphasized the importance of “being present in the states and providing an opportunity for the grass roots at the state level to come together at their state capitals.”
Currently, the March for Life holds marches in 17 states, but Lichter said the organization will continue to expand this.
“There’s a lot of reasons for hope,” Lichter said, and “a lot of peace and confidence knowing we’re working for a truly righteous cause.”