WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence told a crowd gathered in Washington for the annual March for Life rally that ending taxpayer-funded abortion is an important priority of President Trump.
He said the Trump administration would “work with the Congress to end taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion providers, and we will devote those resources to health care services for women across America.”
Speaking to a crowd gathered near the Washington Monument, Pence said the nation’s founders, in the Declaration of Independence, intended “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to be for all Americans, including the unborn.
He accused the U. S. Supreme Court, in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion, of having “turned away from these timeless ideals.”
He said Trump would be nominating a Supreme Court justice next week who “will uphold the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution.”
No president or vice president has spoken at the march before, according to a march spokeswoman.
Pence, who has called himself an “evangelical Catholic,” has long been a hero among anti-abortion activists and as governor of Indiana signed what was considered some of the strictest laws on abortion.
Organizers expected tens of thousands of people at the events.
Trump used his Twitter account to express support for abortion opponents attending the march.
“The #MarchForLife is so important. To all of you marching – you have my full support!” Trump said in a tweet.
The March for Life is usually held on the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision — Jan. 22 — but it was pushed back this year because of Trump’s inauguration.
This year, organizers believe they will see a surge of energy with the ascension of a president who is expected to move forward on anti-abortion policies, including defunding Planned Parenthood and appointing an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice.
“He’s pro-life,” Lynn Ray, coordinator of campus ministry at the Louisiana State University at Alexandria, said Friday as she stood on Constitution Avenue with a group from the university. “So that’s good for us.”
“Being that we’re Catholics, we’re very pro-life,” she said. “Every step we take, we take for an unborn baby,” she said. “We’re not persecuting anyone, of course, just marching for the babies.”
Madeline Runyan, 22, a senior at LSU, said she, too, was pleased with President Trump’s stance on abortion. “I’m very confident in what he’s doing to help this cause,” she said. “I’m really excited and optimistic.”
The rally began at 11:45 a.m. The march kicks off at 1 p.m., heads east on Constitution Avenue, and ends at the Supreme Court.
Earlier, Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, listed her four demands for Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress:
• Appoint an anti-abortion justice to the Supreme Court.
• Make the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for many abortions in the United States, into a permanent law rather than the one-year provision that has been extended each year from 1976 to the present.
• Pass a law banning abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
• Stop all federal funding for Planned Parenthood unless the organization were to somehow stop performing abortions.
The gathering comes a week after Trump’s inauguration and follows last Saturday’s massive Women’s March on Washington.
Asked about the Women’s March, Ray said:
“I’m all about women’s rights, except when it comes to the baby. I believe – it’s my opinion – but I believe a baby is a gift from God, and once the baby is a gift from God, it’s no longer your body, but there’s another body within. And that body has a right also.”
The first march was held one year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that recognized a right to abortion nationwide. Subsequent marches have been held on or near the Jan. 22 anniversary every year since.
The past eight years’ marches have been grimmer affairs, with tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists gathering to show their solidarity with one another and restate their opposition, but with little chance of having their hopes fulfilled on the federal level.
This year, change seems not only possible but imminent.
March participants’ anti-abortion stance is counter to the position held by most Americans. Nationwide, 57 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, the highest percentage since 1996, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll. Thirty-nine percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the poll. Eighty percent of Americans who do not affiliate with a faith group – a rapidly growing portion of the population – say abortion should be legal, according to the Pew poll.
The March for Life is unlikely to draw as large a crowd as the Women’s March or Trump’s inauguration, but organizers said they hope for hundreds of thousands of participants.
In recent years, turnout has generally hovered in the tens of thousands. EventsDC said that 92 buses have obtained permits to park at RFK Stadium on Friday, compared with 450 buses that requested permits for Inauguration Day and 1,200 buses for the Women’s March. Metro, anticipating a large crowd, will run extra trains on Friday, just as it did for the Women’s March.
For decades, the march was run largely by a Virginia woman named Nellie Gray, who died in 2012. Always strongly Catholic-based and attended by many Catholic school groups, the march draws attendees from across the country and has in recent years attracted more evangelicals.
Nearly 70 percent of white evangelicals think that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 54 percent of Catholics say that abortion should be legal, according to the Pew Research Center.
