Thousands of anti-abortion protesters denouncing the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision on its 36th anniversary flooded the National Mall.
The annual March for Life started with prayer services in the Verizon Center, then moved to a noontime rally on the Mall and concluded with a march to the Supreme Court. The crowd of protesters, which stretched for about a quarter-mile on the Mall in front of the Capitol, invoked the rhetoric used by President Obama in his inauguration speech two days earlier.
“We hope and pray that when President Obama talks about equality, that he includes the life of an unborn child,” said Sister Sharon Santos, who came from Trenton, N.J., by train Thursday morning. “We pray he makes the change that we’re hoping for.”
With George W. Bush in the White House, anti-abortion activists had a faithful supporter, but with Obama now sitting in the Oval Office, many voiced concerns that he’ll undo Bush’s decisions.
Bush appointed two Supreme Court justices who were among the five-member majority upholding a federal ban on partial-birth abortions. The 43rd president also cut funding for international organizations that perform abortions.
Obama, however, has said he’ll sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would turn the opinion expressed in Roe v. Wade into federal law, forbidding interference with a woman’s right to abort a pregnancy.
On Thursday, many protesters carried sings saying, “Yes We Can Terminate Abortion,” a reference to Obama’s campaign slogan. Those and other signs bobbed above the crowd as it marched from the Mall and spilled onto Constitution Avenue.
The marching mass was led by a group from Christendom College in Front Royal that held a sign reading “March for Life, Support the Life Principle.” The college students, dressed in blue ponchos, recited the Hail Mary prayer as they progressed.
As they reached the corner of First Street and Constitution Avenue, where a scanty counterdemonstration had formed yards from the Supreme Court, the marchers turned their prayers to chants: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go!”
The march ended in front of the Supreme Court, with some of the marchers kneeling in prayer outside the courthouse.
“I prayed that the Lord would touch the hearts of those that sit on the Supreme Court, and I prayed for the soul of my son whom I helped kill 38 years ago through abortion,” one man said, declining to give his name because “my other children don’t know that, but I know.”
