Women from around the nation ready to trek to the March for Life

Despite being stranded in two feet of snow, the then 18-year-old Michigander from Grand Rapids said their group was resilient; two members hiked across the field from the Turnpike to the home of a farmer, who then took them to a grocery store to get food. They also found creative ways to stay warm, including using prayer and song to keep them from letting the cold and confining circumstances get the best of them.

“It was an experience that made me even more devoted to attending this year’s march as opposed to discouraging me,” she said.

Cooper is one of hundreds of pro-life Michiganders who will descend upon the nation’s capital Friday, coming from every state in the country, to voice their support for the unborn.

Last year, like most years, the media coverage was so non-existent that the stranded attendees on the Pennsylvania Turnpike received more play than the March for Life itself.

This year, thanks in part to the attention last Saturday’s Women’s March held the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the inequity of coverage given to the March for Life for decades, that streak may finally end, said Jeanne Mancini, president of the pro-life organization.

“Since last Saturday my phone has been blowing up with the press interested in discussing the march, its purpose, and the attendance,” she said.

“In the past, we haven’t received the media coverage we believe we have deserved given the cause, but also the amount of people who attend,” she said.

Mancini is cautious in predicting the numbers, but most estimates place the annual attendance in the hundreds of thousands, similar to the number that the Women’s March last week attracted, not only in Washington, DC but in cities across the country.

Another little-noted fact is that satellite pro-life events happen across the country just as they did for last week’s Women’s March. Thousands of marches were staged in California, Washington State, Illinois and other states earlier this month for those who cannot make it to Washington.

Mancini said despite 39 years of the organization being an entity of one — that being Nellie Gray, a lawyer who devoted her life to the anti-abortion movement after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – the organization has moved from the late Gray’s living room to its first full-time staff in the past few years.

“But we are still on a very shoe-string budget,” she said. “This year we have finally embraced using technology to reach out to young people,” she admitted.

And unlike the Women’s March, where a third party collected data from the ‘Count Me’ campaign that encouraged their attendees to text a five-digit number so they’d be registered as having participated, Mancini said she will encourage “Life” participants to text directly to their organization.

“This is a tool that will place them in contact with their members of congress, and is part of our new advocacy program that connects pro-life activists with ways they can participate locally,” she said. Cooper will be traveling with 700 other young people from across Michigan on

Cooper will be traveling with 700 other young people from across Michigan on buses that will bring them to the event from their college campuses. Many of them will take part in the annual Mass at the Basilica and the youth conference, as well as the march.

“Essentially the March for Life is a rally protesting abortion which takes place every year in DC near the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion,” said Chris Gast, one of the organizers of the Michigan bus trip. “This year the theme is ‘the power of one,”’ he said.

Gast, 32, said after the Women’s March on D.C., people’s interest in attending or wanting more information spiked at the Michigan Right to Life office in Grand Rapids, “Interest this year has been growing, especially with the administration hinting that they are open to pro-life policies,” he said.

Mancini said many pro-life voters, were motivated to support Trump because of his campaign promise that he would appoint conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and to the lower courts.

“He has the ability to completely change the court system for a generation,” she said.

Mancini said she has reached out to the “highest levels” in the White House for them to speak to the attendees on Friday, having already secured the first female to ever lead a winning campaign for president, Kellyanne Conway, to headline the event.

So could that mean the President or Vice-President Mike Pence might speak Friday?

“Like I said, I have reached out to the highest offices,” Mancini said.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer hinted Tuesday that the possibility exists for a Trump and or Pence appearance, “I think we’re stilling working through the details, but we’ll have further information about the President’s potential participation in that.”

If either man attended it would be historic. Although Ronald Reagan sent a video and George W. Bush participated in a phone call with participants, no president or vice president has ever attended the march in 43 years. Conway, a devout Catholic and mother of four, told the Washington Examiner she was “happy to speak” to the rally. One of the top advisors to the President, she headlines a group of luminaries that include New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Sen Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rep. Mia Love of Utah and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey.

There will be no Madonna, or Scarlett Johannsen or Cher or any other celebrity at the event, at least not celebrating it.

Jeanne Mancini says she welcomes women who are not pro-life to attend the march this week, “We can all be better people and better citizens if we welcome people to listen to our ideals and our values, you may not be persuaded, then again you might,” she said.

Despite Pew Research survey showing one in six pro-life women voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election cycle, pro-life women were told they were not welcome to attend the women’s march last Saturday.

Kevin Washo, a pro-life Democrat from Pennsylvania who chaired the DNC convention in Philadelphia, said his party needs to be more inclusive to everyone or it risks losing further the main street voters who were once the heart of the party.

“I am both a progressive and pro-life. Women can be progressive, and feminist and pro-life as well,” he said.