This Friday afternoon, more than 100,000 men and women are marching across the National Mall in support of life. But if the media has their way, you won’t hear about the March for Life, the people who attend it, or the message they represent.
Last year, the only reason the March for Life made headlines is because the media focused on one of its attendees: Covington Catholic high schooler Nick Sandmann and his red hat. Multiple journalists wrongly smeared Sandmann as a racist, and several even used the opportunity to condemn everyone else present. ABC News’s Good Morning America gave airtime to a Planned Parenthood executive who smeared the March for Life as “radical” and “dangerous.”
The only reason the media are acknowledging the march this year is because President Trump spoke at the event in person, becoming the first president to do so. The significance of this presidential first has forced the media to acknowledge the March for Life’s existence. But they continue to frame it not as an event in support of something good, but as an event against women’s rights.
CBS News described marchers as “anti-abortion rights groups,” and CNN adopted the “annual anti-abortion March for Life event” nickname. Another CNN headline reads, “Trump vows support for anti-abortion movement.” This is hardly surprising. Almost every liberal journalist favors pro-choice laws, as my colleague Tim Carney notes. And last year’s Covington Catholic debacle proved that much of the media dislike the religious activists who oppose those laws.
It’s true that most marchers are indeed anti-abortion, as CBS News noted, and the March for Life is an event in which they openly protest the legalization of abortion. But the March for Life is about much more than that. It’s not just a protest. It’s a celebration — of life, family, love, and all of the values that give society meaning.
It would be naive to claim there aren’t radical pro-life activists. Every movement has its extremists. But the vast majority of marchers hold no animus toward pro-choice individuals, the women who have had abortions, or those who will have them in the future.
But that’s not the impression left by the media’s coverage.
Indeed, most of the media seem intent on framing pro-lifers, many of whom will be at the March for Life, as radicals who want to create a dystopian society similar to The Handmaid’s Tale.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. If the pro-life movement fights to restrict “women’s rights,” it does so only to expand the rights of the unborn. The pro-life movement does not want to overthrow society as we know it. But we do aim to change the laws that do not protect the natural rights to which every human being is entitled and to change the court decisions that do not reflect the natural law upon which this country was founded.
The pro-life movement is rooted in the fundamental principle that every life brings love. And that will remain true, no matter what the media say.
