Trump, Vance speak at antiabortion March for Life rally in D.C.

Category: In the News
By: March for Life
Posted on: January 27, 2025

Trump, Vance speak at antiabortion March for Life rally in D.C.

(WASHINGTON POST) — Thousands turned out and sent a message to Trump — a complicated figure for the antiabortion movement.

Nearly three years after the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down federal abortion rights, and only days after the self-described “most pro-life president ever” reentered the White House, thousands of antiabortion demonstrators marched to the U.S. Capitol on Friday for the 52nd March for Life.

But even bolstered by Donald Trump’s reelection and a new ruling GOP trifecta, the annual rite found the antiabortion movement at a crossroads, still working to stake out a new front line in a shifting fight over abortion access.

In a video address played Friday to the frigid, wind-whipped crowd, Trump reiterated his antiabortion record but stopped short of promising to pursue restricting abortion access.

“In my second term we will again stand proud for families and for the rights of the unborn,” shielding them from “radical left attacks on churches and crisis centers,” Trump said. “We will get them to justice one way or another.”

On the eve of the rally, he pardoned 23 people who were convicted of blocking access to reproductive health clinics, fulfilling another campaign promise to reward political supporters who have run afoul of the law. And on Friday, the Justice Department said it would scale back Biden-era efforts to prosecute demonstrators who interfere with patient access to the clinics.

The crowd’s biggest reaction at the march, however, came after Trump’s image faded from the monitor and Vice President JD Vance took the stage. In his first public appearance since taking office, Vance positioned what has long been among the nation’s most divisive social issues as a problem intertwined with economic struggle — a theme that helped power the Republican ticket to dominance last November.

“It is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids,” Vance said. “It should be easier to raise a family, easier to find a good job, easier to build a home to raise that family in, easier to save up and purchase a good stroller or a crib for a nursery.”

The messaging was echoed by many speakers Friday, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) — who told the crowd Dobbs did not signal the fight’s end; the battle was to change American culture itself.

“People have asked me if we are done marching in Washington because Roe versus Wade was overturned,” Jennie Bradley Lichter, president-elect of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told the crowd at the start of the rally. “No, of course not, we are not done. We will keep marching until abortion is not only illegal but unthinkable. We have so much work left to do.”

Since Dobbs, a handful of states have set their own restrictions, and as of October, one in three women ages 18 to 44 live in a state where abortion is banned or mostly banned. Yet research has found that the number of abortions in the United States increased in 2023 as more people accessed medication-induced abortions to end unwanted pregnancies.

A national exit poll conducted by Edison Research from the 2024 election shows that 65 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in most cases, while 31 percent said it should be mostly or always illegal. Notably, Trump won 29 percent support among voters who supported abortion rights, along with 91 percent of those who opposed legal abortion, the poll showed.

“Polling has suggested they’re not winning the battle for hearts and minds anymore,” abortion movement historian Mary Ziegler said of antiabortion activists. “In that sense, the movement finds itself at a crossroads.”

Since the fall of Roe, antiabortion groups have sharpened their focus on pressing federal lawmakers to defund Planned Parenthood and launched legal efforts to restrict access to mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication. March for Life has marches planned in 17 states in 2025, according to its website.

States have staked out vastly different positions, with the most conservative banning all or most abortions. This month, Maryland enshrined the right to abortion access in the state’s constitution.

Bob Craig, 65, a deacon who traveled to the march with a group of Massachusetts parishes, said this year marked at least his 10th March for Life. He said the sense of unity kept him coming back. Today, Craig said he was particularly interested to hear from Vance.

“Politics aside, it’s comforting to know we have that kind of voice in the vice president’s office advocating for us,” Craig said, agreeing with Trump’s assessment that abortion is an issue best left to the states. He said he thought a federal abortion ban would go against the Constitution.

“I believe that people get to make their own decisions in terms of state government, but now this shifts the responsibility to make good choices at a state level in their legislation against abortion.”

Organizers expected up to 150,000 demonstrators, according to a National Parks Services permit application. The agency does not document crowd sizes. The area of the Washington Monument grounds cordoned off was nearly full Friday, and buses of high school students, college ministry groups and seniors alike who traveled to the nation’s capital to demonstrate.

The Patriot Front, a white supremacist organization, also joined the march, holding a banner that declared: “Strong families make strong nations.” A live stream shared on X by News2Share’s Ford Fischer showed the group marching by the Washington Monument while carrying flagpoles with an upside down American flag, the Betsy Ross flag and a flag with the group’s logo. At one point, several teenage boys or young adult men walked past the group and gave members a fist bump.

Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, condemned the group’s presence in a statement: “March for Life promotes the beauty, dignity, and worth of every human life by working to end the violence of abortion. We condemn any organization that seeks to exclude a person or group of people based on the color of their skin or any other characteristic.”

Vance’s keynote address directly urged the crowd to think culturally, but also noted the government had a role to play in helping families.

“We failed a generation by not only permitting a culture of abortion on demand but neglecting to help young parents achieve what they need to have a happy and meaningful life,” he said. “We need a culture that celebrates life at all stages and truly believes the benchmark of national successes is not our GDP numbers or our stock market, but whether people feel they can raise healthy and thriving families in our country.”

For Liberty University students Evan Gaitonde, 18, and Bo Bishop, 19, the vice president’s pro-family message hit home.

“He knows what it’s like to be a father, he knows the joys of parenthood, and he wants to spread that to the generation of today to encourage us,” said Bishop, who was among the more than 1,000 students the Christian university bussed in.

“When I have kids one day I hope they get this kind of love and support from the community,” Gaitonde said.

Leaving the staging area, Gloria O’Brien, 66, stood out from the crowd in a sequined black beret with a gold sticker on the back reading “Made in the womb.”

The Guatemalan native said she found the level of controversy over abortion to be shocking when she arrived in the United States in her 30s.

“In Guatemala, every family loves babies,” she said. “When I hear that people are rejecting the babies, I was like, ‘why?’”

She and her husband, Gregory O’Brien, 60, are retired and living in a small town in Colorado. They said they were excited to attend their first antiabortion march.

As a former public school superintendent in Los Angeles County, Gregory O’Brien said he has been moved by watching young people grow throughout his career, and feels compelled to protect that potential.

While he said he’d love to see some federal policy changes under Trump, or more state constraints on abortion, it’s more of a new mentality among the American public that he’s after.

The goal is “to make it unthinkable,” he said.


(Originally published in Washington Post)

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