Anti-abortion demonstrators take part in the annual March for Life rally, in Washington, on Jan. 24.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
On the streets near a White House newly reoccupied by Donald Trump, a student group from Baton Rouge waved pompoms and danced to Party In The U.S.A. Nearby, a marching band drummed a brisk beat. A man uttered prayers into a megaphone. Young men in clerical clothing tossed a football.
For 52 years, Americans have joined the March for Life in Washington.
But for those determined to end abortion in the country, few of those years have delivered as much cause for celebration.
“We are winning,” Chris Smith, a Republican Congressman from New Jersey, told the crowd gathered on the National Mall Friday.
“And we have just begun,” he said.
For decades, U.S. anti-abortion leaders built up a political movement potent enough to alter the balance of a U.S. Supreme Court that, in 2022, overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had granted a right to abortion. Only nine states now place no restrictions on abortion; in 12, the procedure is banned.
That victory has been dimmed only partly by seven states that voted in favour of protecting abortion rights, many through state constitutional amendments.
Abortion opponents say their work remains far from finished, at the local and federal level.
“We will keep marching here in Washington until abortion is not only illegal, but unthinkable. And we still have work to do,” said Jennie Bradley Lichter, the president-elect for the march, looking out over a crowd flecked with “Defund Planned Parenthood” signs.
For those seeking greater restrictions on abortions, now is not the time to take a pause, not with allies now installed across the apex of American political power. Instead, they came to Washington in hopes of securing greater curbs to accessing the procedures, in a march that offered a snapshot of the ebullience now coursing through the movement.
Perhaps, some hope, the country’s new leadership can foster a cultural conservatism that turns its back on broader sexual freedoms.
Conservatives now control Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House. Mr. Trump, in an executive order this week, pardoned nearly two-dozen anti-abortion protesters, some of them convicted after injuring clinic workers. A separate executive order defines life as beginning at conception. Another order he signed Friday blocks federal funds to international groups that perform or promote abortion, while Republican senators introduced a bill this week to bar all federal abortion spending.
Senate majority leader John Thune, a Republican, was among those who came to address the march on Friday, as did Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Vice-President J.D. Vance.
Mr. Vance described the fight against abortion as part of a broader bid to remake American society, decrying the rise of a “culture of radical individualism” in which “the responsibilities and joys of family life were seen as obstacles to overcome, not as personal fulfilment or personal blessings.”
”I want more babies in the United States of America,” Mr. Vance said, to a roar of cheers.
For some advocates, the demise of Roe v. Wade has raised hopes that they have an opportunity to turn society back toward biblical mores.
Others fear abortion bans will be short-lived if they do not continue to protest. “We don’t want to give it up, because we know how fast it can be taken away from us again,” said Debbie Sterner, who came with fellow churchgoers to the U.S. capital from Pennsylvania, reciting the rosary as they rode down in a bus.
“We want you to know that we’re here,” she said. “We’re not going away.”
Mr. Trump has won acclaim from an abortion movement that covets his power, and has largely been willing to overlook his personal conduct.
Anti-abortion podcaster Lila Rose on Friday adopted Mr. Trump’s political language, celebrating a moment for the country to “usher in a new golden age for America, when we protect every life from the moment of conception. This is our moment.”
Mr. Trump has argued that the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade merely reverted authority over abortion to individual states.
Supporters want him to go further, calling for a countrywide ban.
“The right to life that we all enjoy should be extended on a national level,” said Mary Schwartz, a Pennsylvania woman who attended her first abortion rally in Washington 20 years ago.
Many also support legislation to bar the shipment across state lines of pills used for medication abortions. The Joe Biden administration had sought to expand access to such drugs, including with a successful Supreme Court case to preserve their availability in the U.S.
But “I don’t think that California should be able to send abortion pills to other states,” said Trajen Johnson, an economics student at Columbia University. He was among a group of Ivy League students who joined the march from institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
Most needed, he said, is a cultural shift toward marriage, one he hopes legislation can help to promote – perhaps through tax incentives for children born to married couples.
“If we cut down on just having sex willy-nilly, the abortion rates will go way down,” he said.
Greg Gallo, a New Jersey municipal worker, argued that leaders, Mr. Trump included, should offer a “living example” of a more virtuous way to live.
“The core issue is secularism, really,” he said. “A lot of times abortion results from sexual immorality, fornication, sex outside of marriage.”