A week apart, the March for Life and the Women’s March on Washington demand comparison. Obviously, the two demonstrations are demographically, ideologically and politically opposed. But in the eyes of the media, only size matters.
After half-a-million women descended on Washington for the feminist demonstration last week, March for Life President Jeanne Mancini says she’s been peppered with “questions about numbers this week.”
“Journalists keep asking me what are your numbers for March for Life,” Mancini told protestors massed around the Washington Monument. “Well, it’s hard to add up so many numbers after 44 years, because there have been a lot of us.”
On that point, she’s right. Each year since Roe v. Wade, the demonstration has gathered in the capitol in protest. Annual size estimates range from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands. And in the aggregate, there have clearly been more anti-abortion protestors.
This year, though, the new pro-abortion march was expected to dwarf its much older anti-abortion counterpart. The March for Life registered 95 buses to carry protestors, Politico reports, in comparison to the 1,800 buses registered by the Women’s March.
“But that’s not really the point,” Mancini said over the loudspeaker Friday, shrugging off the comparison. “The only number I care about, the only number all of us care about, is 58 million. Since 1973, 58 million Americans have been lost to abortion.”
While abortions are more rare today than at any point since Roe, Mancini’s math is within the margin of error. It’s why marchers say they return to D.C. each year from around the country.
“We stand here for them today. We stand with the little innocent children, who have lost their lives,” she said, “And we stand for their mothers who regret their abortion.”
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
