Last Updated Jan 27, 2017 12:16 PM EST
The March for Life , held each year in Washington to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, will have one of its biggest-name speakers in years: Vice President Mike Pence.
Tens of thousands of activists will gather today in Washington for the March for Life anti-abortion rally. But for prospective Supreme Court nomi…
Neither a president nor a vice president has ever addressed the march, which is now in its 44th year. One of President Trump ’s top advisers, Kellyanne Conway , is also on the speakers’ list.
Conway told the crowd that Mr. Trump and Pence stood with them.
“We hear you,” Conway said. “We see you. We respect you, and we look forward to working with you.”
Just before the rally was scheduled to begin, Mr. Trump expressed his support for the event on Twitter.
“The #MarchForLife is so important,” the president said. “To all of you marching — you have my full support!”
The #MarchForLife is so important. To all of you marching — you have my full support!
Organizers told the National Park Service in their permit application they expect 50,000 participants. Yet Mr. Trump insisted on the eve of the rally that the crowd would be far larger, saying “a lot of people are gonna be showing up.”
“You know, the press never gives them the credit that they deserve,” Mr. Trump told Republicans gathered in Philadelphia. “They’ll have 300, 400, 500, 600 thousand people. You won’t even read about it. When other people show up, you read big-time about it. Right? So, it’s not fair, but nothing fair about the media.”
Abortion-rights opponents gather at the Washington Monument to hear Vice President Mike Pence speak at the March for Life rally on Jan. 27, 2017, in Washington.
One of Mr. Trump’s first official acts after taking office a week ago was to sign an executive order banning U. S. aid to foreign groups that provide abortions.
In Congress, Republican majorities in both chambers are vowing to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provided more than a third of the nation’s abortions in 2014. They also hope to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Mr. Trump has pledged to sign both measures if they reach his desk.
In a suggestion now gone viral, thousands of donations to Planned Parenthood have been made in VP-elect Mike Pence’s name.
Less than a year ago, with President Obama’s second term winding down, things were markedly different. The Supreme Court struck down Texas’ strict regulations on abortion clinics as interfering with a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. And with polls at the time suggesting Hillary Clinton would likely defeat Mr. Trump, abortion opponents worried about an era of liberal majorities on the court.
“The horizon looked bleak for the pro-life movement,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life.
Mancini suggested that many voters chose Mr. Trump largely because he pledged to appoint a Supreme Court justice who shared their views on abortion, even if they disagreed with him on other issues.
“I don’t identify as a Republican or a Democrat but I do vote pro-life,” Mancini said.
But for federal appeals court Judge William Pryor, outspoken opposition to abortion as Alabama’s attorney general has pushed him to the bottom of Mr. Trump’s shortlist, CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford reports.
President Donald Trump will announce his Supreme Court justice nominee next week. CBS News‘ Jan Crawford discusses the leading contenders.
Sources tell CBS News Pryor’s nomination is unlikely after Senate Republicans warned about a repeat of his 2003 appeals court confirmation fight.
“I believe that not only is the case unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, but it has led to a morally wrong result,” Pryor said then. “It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children. That’s my personal belief.”
For two years, Democrats blocked Pryor’s confirmation.
Abortion opponents were heartened by a recent study that found the number of abortions in the United States dropped under 1 million in 2014, the lowest total in 40 years. The report by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, credited increased access to birth control but also a surge in abortion restrictions in many states.
Americans remain deeply divided on abortion.
The latest Gallup survey, released last spring, found that 47 percent of Americans described themselves as pro-choice and 46 percent as pro-life. It also found that 79 percent believed abortion should be legal in either some or all circumstances.
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said that poll shows why abortion-rights supporters shouldn’t despair. She also said Republicans were taking actions that would result in more illegal abortions and deaths of pregnant women.
“The vast majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade and support the legal right to abortion,” Hogue said.
Friday’s march comes less than a week after one of the largest mass demonstrations in the city’s history, the Women’s March on Washington, which drew more than half a million people opposed to Mr. Trump on issues including abortion.
In America’s capital and in cities across the globe, millions take to the streets in solidarity against the new Trump administration
Mancini said she had planned to participate in the women’s march until organizers dropped an anti-abortion group as an official partner. She said its failure to embrace different views on abortion was a missed opportunity.
