March for Life announces ‘longtime marcher’ as new president
(EWTN) — The March for Life announced Thursday that longtime president Jeanne Mancini will pass the torch early next year to Jennie Bradley Lichter, a leading pro-life legal advocate and scholar.
“Leading the March for Life has been the honor and opportunity of a lifetime, one for which I will be forever grateful. There have been countless highlights during my time as president of March for Life, including the momentous overturn of Roe v. Wade,” said Mancini, who has led the pro-life organization for the past 12 years.
“I’m convinced that building a culture of life through compassionate public witness to the inherent dignity of the unborn and their mothers is as critically important today as it was the tragic day abortion was first legalized in the United States — or at any time since,” she said.
“I am more than delighted to watch how the organization will continue to grow under Jennie Bradley Lichter’s leadership.”
Catholic pro-life activist Nellie Gray founded the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in 1974 following the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
The organization, which now bills its march as the world’s largest annual human rights demonstration, celebrated its 51st anniversary with this year’s gathering, which took place in late January and attracted tens of thousands.
Mancini was only the second person to serve as president of the March for Life, after Gray herself, who died in 2012. Mancini’s tenure of a dozen years was marked by “consistent and extraordinarily fruitful growth,” the group says, which includes the establishment of a “rapidly expanding” state march program, already present in 16 states.
Other major milestones under Mancini’s leadership include hosting for the first time the sitting vice president and president of the United States at the national March in 2020 as well as the landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which returned the power to legislate on abortion to the states.
