Achievable priorities, instead of pipe dreams, were front and center at the March for Life Friday as the newly supportive White House vowed to crack down on abortion.
For the last eight years, a sense of futility had undergirded the annual abortion protest, with an Obama administration just down the street that firmly supported abortion rights. But protesters gathered with a dramatically different mood Friday, as they listened to their longtime ally Vice President Mike Pence pledge that he and President Trump are on their side.
“Life is winning in America,” Pence told thousands of protesters gathered on the National Mall.
Trump couldn’t have chosen a running mate more able to excite opponents of abortion. Pence was one of the first Republicans to go after Planned Parenthood, when in 2007, as a congressman from Indiana, he introduced legislation to block the organization from receiving family planning funds.
And as Indiana governor, Pence signed laws requiring aborted fetuses to be cremated or buried and mandating that women must have an ultrasound at least 18 hours before a scheduled abortion.
The scene at SCOTUS #MarchForLife pic.twitter.com/axSDV9bju8— Sean Langille (@SeanLangille) January 27, 2017
So when Pence took the stage at the March for Life, which has been held every year since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, he brought a tangible energy and sense of purpose as he promised to fulfill some longstanding goals that were dead ends for the anti-abortion movement in the Obama years.
“Mike Pence really started blowing the whistle on that 10 years ago,” said David Daleiden, the activist who published a series of undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood in 2015 that led to attempts by Congress to defund the group.
Daleiden, who was backstage at the rally, said it was Pence who motived him to go after Planned Parenthood.
“That’s the reason … I focused on it and I think that’s why the pro-life movement has continued to focus on it,” Daleiden told the Washington Examiner.
Pence didn’t name Planned Parenthood explicity during his brief address at the rally before the march to the Supreme Court. But he did promise that Trump will deliver on promises he made during the campaign to stop what conservatives see as taxpayer funding of abortion, by blocking Medicaid dollars from Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood responded by pointing to a Quinnipiac poll released Friday finding that 62 percent of Americans don’t want to cut off government funding to the group.
“We will not stand by as Vice President Pence tries to impose his radical, dangerous, and highly unpopular agenda on this country,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president for Planned Parenthood Acton Fund said in a statement.
Pence received some of his loudest applause when he reiterated that next week, Trump plans to nominate an anti-abortion justice for the Supreme Court. And he said he was “humbled” by becoming the first vice president to attend the March for Life.
The vice president’s overriding message to the crowd was that he is their ally.
“Be assured,” Pence said. “Along with you we will not grow weary, we will not rest until we restore a culture of life in America for ourselves and our posterity.”
The partially cloudy and chilly weather was still far better than last year, when a snowstorm hit Washington the day of the march and dampened participation. It’s not clear exactly how many people attended, but organizers were hoping to attract more people than the estimated half a million who attended the women’s march on Saturday.
It’s thought that attendance at the March for Life is in the hundreds of thousands every year, reaching a record high of as many as 650,000 attendees in 2013, the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. The National Park Service stopped releasing estimates in the 1990s.
Another key administration official, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, also addressed the gathering, calling it “a time of incredible promise for the pro-life movement.”
After Pence and Conway kicked off the rally, a number of members of Congress spoke, including Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Mia Love of Utah and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.
“You and I are profoundly thankful that President Trump and Vice President Pence are already accomplishing amazing things,” Smith said.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also expressed support for the gathering. “This past November, voters sent clear pro-life voices in President Trump and Vice President Pence to the White House,” she said.
