WASHINGTON (RNS) — After a presidential campaign in which anti-abortion activists lamented that their issue had faded from the GOP’s agenda, the first March for Life in the second Trump administration roared their approval as President Trump appeared by video and Vice President J.D. Vance spoke to them live from a stage erected on the National Mall on Friday (Jan. 24).
“I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance told a chilly but enthusiastic crowd sprinkled with red MAGA hats. “ I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”
Vance said the new administration would focus on making “it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids” and touted Trump’s pardon Thursday of 23 anti-abortion activists, some of whom had been prosecuted for blockading an abortion clinic and sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
Trump, in a pre-recorded video, said, “ It was my honor to grant a full and complete pardon to Paula (Harlow) and many others who were the victims of this horrific weaponization.”
Many at the march gave Trump and Vance glowing reviews for the administration’s approach to issues that for them fall under the “pro-life” banner — such as opposition to abortion, a belief in two distinct genders and support for disabled people.
March for Life attendees listen as Vice President JD Vance addresses the rally, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
“I would give (the new administration) an A-plus-plus-plus-plus,” said the Rev. Nabil Nour, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod minister who said he had frequently raised money for a crisis pregnancy center with a long-distance bicycle campaign. “ They have the vision, not on earthly living, but on heavenly living,” he said of the Republican politicians who spoke at the rally.
Trump and Vance have supported government funding for in vitro fertilization and continuing the availability of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions as well as some types of high blood sugar, and said during the 2024 campaign that Trump would veto a national abortion ban if it landed on his desk.
Addressing the crowd, Lila Rose, the president of advocacy group Live Action, who at one point last year said she would not vote for Trump because of his abortion views but later endorsed him, renewed her call to “abolish abortion” but did not criticize Trump or Vance, instead praising Trump for the pardons.
In an interview, Patrick Stanton, an activist who stands outside Philadelphia abortion clinics “every day” to preach “ the message of chastity and pro-life,” said that Vance “ just needs to be educated” on IVF. “ He probably wasn’t educated,” he said.
Nevertheless, Stanton expressed concern that the anti-abortion plank was removed from the Republican Party platform at the GOP convention in July, saying they “slipped a little bit.” He said that concern prompted him to come to Washington for the march, even as he and others from Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, have been demonstrating at the statehouse in Harrisburg to influence Pennsylvania lawmakers to ban abortion in the state.
Stanton, who said he knows a few of those pardoned personally, had enthusiastic praise for Trump’s pardons.
Scenes from the annual March for Life, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision in 2021, March for Life organizers have also encouraged anti-abortion activists to focus their attention on statehouses, where decisions over the legality of abortion are now being made.
As protesters arrived at the national march, they had to contend with an extensive security screening by the Secret Service around the perimeter of the rally. One of Stanton’s fellow parishioners from Immaculate Conception repeatedly set off a metal detector before finding his rosary in his pocket.
Once inside, they heard from a series of Republicans, with organizers noting that this year was the first time that the Senate Majority leader and the speaker of the House both addressed the marchers.
“ Now we have President Donald J. Trump back in the White House, we are entering a new era,” Johnson told the crowd. “ I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception rather than birth.” He touted the House’s passage of the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act on Thursday, which would require medical personnel to sustain an infant’s life if it survived an attempted abortion. (It had earlier failed to pass a cloture vote in the Senate, with Democrats holding that the bill would not increase protections for infants while increasing risk for providers.)
Scenes from the annual March for Life, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose state is one of the few to have defeated an abortion rights ballot amendment since the fall of Roe, told the crowd, “ We were told since Dobbs by people, political consultants, pundits, many people that are more establishment Republicans, that standing for the right to life was somehow terrible politics, you wouldn’t get elected, all this other stuff. Well, I can tell you, I’m proof that that’s not true.”
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Some prominent religious leaders in the crowd were cautious in their judgments of the new administration. Metropolitan Tikhon, who leads the Orthodox Church in America, told RNS, “It’s a little too soon” to evaluate the new administration’s approach, but “ it does seem like the direction that they’re going in is to be positive for the pro-life movement.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland, who led the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, before being removed by Pope Francis after a formal investigation of his management, told RNS, “It’s a real opportunity with the new administration, we have some hope.” But he cautioned that “we still have a lot of hearts that need to be changed. I hope that’s what we focus on.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland, center, takes photos with attendees at the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told RNS that partisan flavor of the rally was unproductive. “We need to bring people into the pro-life fold,” Day said. “ It pushes people the other direction.”
Day praised Trump for his pardons of anti-abortion activists and urged the administration to bolster the social safety net and to make lowering the cost of giving birth “a major priority,” explaining she was worried that some of those programs would be cut. Day also said that the organization would be pushing for paid leave.
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Many participants and speakers expressed hope that abortion rights advocates’ minds would change if they were given the right information.
“ These people aren’t inherently evil, they’re just being fed lies. And the more they hear these lies, the more they believe them,” said Bethany Hamilton, a surfer who lost her arm to a shark attack and who was a keynote speaker at the march.
Hamilton encouraged attendees to find ways to support pregnant women.
Heather Lawless, who works with Reliance Ministries to provide a range of services to pregnant women in northern Idaho, told RNS she lives that out.
“ It’s the church’s job, not the government’s job, to take care of these women,” the nondenominational Christian said.
Scenes from the annual March for Life rally, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
