The vice president will no doubt say the right things, but is that enough?
The March for Life announced Friday that the vice president will be speaking at the rally before the March this coming Friday. Not that surprising. It used to be that the president might send a video message. I honestly preferred it, because it didn’t make the event the security nightmare that comes with presidents and vice presidents being in attendance.
And: I wish we didn’t have politicians there. I’d make an exception for Chris Smith, the human-rights stalwart from New Jersey. And Dan Lipinski, the former Democratic congressman from Illinois who got primaried out of office because of his pro-life activism. But the year Donald Trump showed up, I was sad and even maybe a little mad.
I have good friends who worked for the March for Life then and still do now: Jeanne Mancini and now Jennie Lichter. And I’m happy for them that the White House appreciates the importance of the event. It doesn’t hurt for longtime sustainability. And the March is such powerful civic engagement for high-school and college students, some of whom spend all night (or more) on buses to be present and be grateful for their own lives and give voice to the rights of others to be born. Even though Roe v. Wade is gone — the case is reason the event is in frigid January — it’s good to march. For the sake of truth, and history, and life. And it’s both an education for the young people and an encouragement for the rest of us.
JD Vance lost me, I confess, when he talked about his support for making abortion pills accessible on Meet the Press right before he was picked as the vice-presidential nominee. He was echoing Donald Trump, but he knew better. I say that having been, on the other hand, impressed hearing him a time before that at an Ohio March for Life, speaking in tenderly fatherly terms about protecting young women. I thought at the time: If someone passes by the statehouse right now and hears this, this might be a side of the pro-life movement they won’t catch on mainstream media. So I have no doubt he will say the appropriate things. But unless we in the pro-life movement are cheap dates, that isn’t enough.
For those of you who haven’t been, the rally isn’t the most important part of the March for Life experience. It is getting lost in the crowds and seeing the goodness and joy — and often old friends and National Review readers. And of course, the most important part is really that we do continue to march.