Will This Week Be the Last March for Life?

T his year may be the last January March for Life. If you’ve never been to the March for Life, it’s a sight to behold. High-school and college students descend on the nation’s capital. There’s always a big showing from North Dakota thanks to the University of Mary in Bismarck — including this year. They actually returned to lead the march one year after an epic 24-hour standstill in busses caught in a blizzard on the way home from the march in 2016. (I was on one of them, as it happens. The goodness of the young helped make the time renewing.)

I almost always encounter students from Louisiana the day before, at Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. They do some civic sightseeing before the march. Other students typically spend the night at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, some in vigil, others catching some sleep in the side chapels and everywhere else there is space. The March for Life is a protest against the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in all three trimesters of pregnancy. It’s also a celebration of life.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Mississippi abortion case currently before the Court, is the reason this may be the last January March for Life. Roe was decided on January 22, 1973. If it’s overturned in June, I’m hoping the march will move to June. The march would then be in thanksgiving. And there will still be many reasons to take a stand against abortion, as the legality of abortion will likely be kicked down to the states. So states such as New York and California will become abortion-tourist destinations.

There are all kinds of caricatures and misconceptions about the pro-life movement. We don’t want to put women in jail. We don’t want them to suffer or be alone. We want women to actually be free to choose life. All too often, the pressures are too great for a woman to consider anything but abortion. A desperate 17-year-old black girl told me some months back, “I don’t even believe in abortion!” — even after she had taken the first pill of a chemical abortion. In her case, her mother wouldn’t let her consider anything other than abortion. She hadn’t finished high school.

And yet, mothers do amazing things. The fundraising galas of maternity homes and women’s care centers include testimonies that are a mere window into what women are capable of when they are able to encounter people who actually love them and want to walk with them as the mothers they are when they are pregnant. And it’s not a nine-month relationship, either. It’s for life, for real. We march for life not only to oppose abortion but also to celebrate the women who have made courageous choices to give life — to mother in challenging circumstances, and to choose adoption.

It was chilling to witness the opposition to adoption that reared its head in the wake of the oral arguments in Dobbs. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a question about safe-haven laws – which allow a desperate woman to drop a newborn off at designated areas (hospitals, fire departments), no questions asked. No complicated process. (In the 1990s, there were way too many cases of women leaving babies in dumpsters.) Would this be sufficient, Barrett asked, in establishing that a woman who gives birth is free not to parent? Unfortunately, what mainstream abortion advocates want — and I’m sorry to put it so bluntly — is a right to a dead baby.

I recently encountered a woman protesting a pro-life prayer vigil outside a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in New York. Addressed by name, I said good morning to her. She replied, “It is a good morning, because no one is forcing me to give birth.” As opposed to the day before? She held a sign in my face about opposing forced birth. The people gathered that morning want women to actually know their choices and not to be pressured in every way to end the life of their unborn children. We’re not about force, but actual freedom.

Abortion is not health care. It’s the most intimate violence against the woman and her developing child, who winds up dead in the process. Heartbeat bills are instructive because they acknowledge that a heartbeat develops fairly early in a pregnancy. As we potentially move toward a post-Roe America, we need to be honest about what we are talking about.

It would seem an impossible plea in these divided times, but could people of goodwill band together to make sure women know they have options that are not abortion? Most pro-choice Americans are not about shouting when it comes to abortion. It was not all that long ago when a Democratic presidential candidate said that abortion essentially was a necessary evil.

We’ve eliminated evil in our country before. Now is the time to band together to make abortion implausible. The young people with the Students for Life signs — “We Are the Post-Roe Generation” — are confident. And the march veterans with the “We Will Help You Signs” from 40 Days for Life will show you the pro-life movement in all its compassion for women who deserve better than abortion.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.