Considering they were protesting what they call “the greatest human rights violation of our time,” the crowd that gathered on the National Mall Friday morning for the March for Life was oddly upbeat. Church and school groups who had traveled across the country to show their opposition to 45 years of legal abortion in America chatted and laughed, enjoying the mild January sunshine. Teens toting “Defend Life” signs snapped pictures of one another mid-jump, with the Capitol Building in the background. As jaunty music floated over the loudspeakers, one coordinator lead his group in a call and response:
“I say ‘Save the,’ you say ‘babies!’ Save the … babies! Save the … babies!” The March for Life protesters see good reason to be cheerful. For 45 years, they’ve turned up in D.C. on or near the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to testify, in the words of their mission, “the beauty of life and the dignity of each human person.” And after all those long years, they feel they may finally be on the verge of a breakthrough.
This year, the Trump administration shone a spotlight on the March for Life, with Donald Trump becoming the first president to address the march directly via a live stream from the Rose Garden. Introducing him, Vice President Mike Pence called Trump “the most pro-life president in American history.”
“Today, tens of thousands of families, students, and patriots—and really, just great citizens—gather here in our nation’s capital,” Trump told the crowd. “You come from many backgrounds, many places. But you all come for one beautiful cause: to build a society where life is celebrated, protected, and cherished.”
“Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence,” Trump continued, to thunderous applause from the assembled marchers. “And that is the right to life.”
Trump’s words might have been scripted, but his weren’t empty in the eyes of pro-lifers. His speech caps a year in which, they say, he has been one of the strongest pro-life advocates to enter the Oval Office.
“I was pleasantly surprised with Trump. The day he was elected, I think at the last minute all the pro-life people just decided we were going to vote for him,” Dee Parker, former vice president of the March for Life, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Parker, now 91, was a key founding member of the march 45 years ago, and still actively participates in anti-abortion politics from her home in Delaware. Trump, she said, has amply repaid the trust of those pro-life voters: “He’s covering a lot of the things that we’ve wanted for years.”
“I think the Trump administration has been wonderful,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest pro-life advocacy group. Tobias rattled off a list of positive changes: the reinstatement of the “Mexico City policy,” which blocks federal funding to international aid groups and health care organizations that provide abortion referrals or advocate for legalized abortion. The reversal of an Obama rule that prevented states from withholding their Title X funds from Planned Parenthood, America’s leading abortion provider.
“And certainly the president’s focus on conscience protection and religious freedom—for us, that’s critical, because we don’t think doctors and nurses, medical providers or any other person should be forced to participate in an abortion that goes against their conscience,” Tobias said. “So the administration is very good throughout.”
The changes Parker and Tobias praise—a spending cut here, a religious exemption there—might seem like small potatoes in the face of the raw numbers of American abortion—more than 60 million since 1973, according to NRLC. But in reality, these changes trace the boundary of the president’s executive authority over abortion. And in a year in which Republicans control all three branches of the federal government, the lack of substantial legislation is a testament to just how difficult laws restricting abortion can be to pass.
“We certainly wanted when last year started to have a complete reversal of Obamacare and defunding of Planned Parenthood,” Tobias said. “Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but we are still going to do everything we can to see that come to fruition.”
And what about other central pro-life initiatives, like one that would ban all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy? “Well, the Senate rules require 60 votes, and we just don’t have that right now,” Tobias responded. “So pro-lifers and National Right to Life will be doing everything we can to elect more pro-life senators, so that after the 2018 election we can get different results on some of these bills.”
Tobias is right: the Senate, where Republicans currently control 51 seats, is a bottleneck for pieces of pro-life legislation that breeze through the House of Representatives. As long as legislators who support legal abortion hold 41 seats, they can filibuster any abortion bill that comes their way, stalling it out indefinitely. Which brings up a thorny question for the March for Life participants: Does it matter how pro-life Trump’s policies are if his historic unpopularity makes it impossible for Republicans to pick up the requisite Senate seats?
Tobias doesn’t think Trump hurts their chances. “Pro-lifers are dedicated and determined. They know that every election could take us one step closer to overturning Roe v. Wade and saving the babies.”
And many marchers I spoke to Friday agreed with her. “He’s done an amazing job,” said Betty McGuire, who runs a pro-life organization in Minneapolis. “The fact that a president would come—that’s a first.”
McGuire’s friend Mary continued: “He’s taking the steps that are needed to protect life one step at a time. And he’s vocal. He’s not whispering things, he says things out loud, and that encourages the people who feel the same way to come out and speak.”
Not all the march’s attendees felt that Trump and their movement were a perfect match. “I don’t feel that the way he acts is pro-life at all,” said Shannon O’Toole, a recent college graduate who traveled to the March from West Virginia. “I am pro-life, and I care very deeply about this issue, but I do not support him. It’s about a culture of life, and I just don’t feel that the way that Donald Trump acts is in support of that culture at all.”
Others offered more specific condemnations of Trump’s personal behavior. “Our president doesn’t embody family values,” said Gunnar, who declined to give his last name because some of his family works in the federal government. “I just feel that it’s a culture of misogyny that results in abortions, and if we respected women more then women wouldn’t see abortion as the most viable option. Misogyny begets promiscuity begets abortions. Personally I wouldn’t want him dating my daughters, so that’s what I want in a president.”
For most of those who trekked to D.C. for the March for Life, their enthusiasm for Trump speaks to their deep disgust for how abortion has wormed its way so deeply into American life. This makes sense intuitively: The people who fear Trump most have always been those who were most content with the political order as it existed before, those whose desperate rallying cry has for a year been THIS IS NOT NORMAL. “Normal,” in this sense, is not something that appeals to the protesters at the March for Life. Normal is 60 million lives ended since 1973. Who has time for normal?
“We all have to work together, because the common goal is to end abortion in the United States,” McGuire said. “It doesn’t matter how we get there, but that we get there in love—marching forward, like they say, keep marching. Hopefully, not for 45 more years.”
