Thousands of protesters are expected to gather in downtown Washington on Friday for the annual March for Life. For 49 consecutive years, antiabortion activists have traveled from all over the country on or around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, determined to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it.
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This year, they could finally get what they want.
Antiabortion demonstrators will convene on the National Mall less than two months after the high court heard Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case reviewing the constitutionality of a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks, which could determine the future of Roe. With a 6-to-3 conservative majority, the court has signaled its willingness to weaken or even overturn the 1973 precedent. The justices initially allowed a Texas law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks to stand while a legal challenge worked its way through the courts. In December, the justices said the case could continue only against Texas licensing officials who oversee nurses, physicians and pharmacists — while again leaving the law in effect.
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Both the Mississippi and Texas laws prohibit abortions well before the point of viability — when a fetus could survive outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks. Roe guaranteed a person’s right to an abortion up to viability.
If Roe is overturned, abortion will become illegal in 12 states, with more than a dozen others likely to ban or significantly restrict the procedure soon after. Many of those who plan to march Friday are newly optimistic, convinced that a post-Roe era is near.
“There is a very big feeling in the pro-life movement and with the young people we work with that something very big is on the horizon,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a Fredericksburg, Va.-based group.
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Many of the students who are part of Hawkins’s group listened to the Dobbs arguments on Dec. 1 and were encouraged by the justices’ questions. Hawkins said her group has been readying for this moment, training more than 130,000 young people over the past 15 years to continue fighting against access to abortion until it is “illegal and then unthinkable.”
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“Roe being reversed really is only the beginning, and that’s what we’ve been preparing for,” Hawkins said, “having this army for this ground game of this fight that will go state by state.”
In past years, abortion rights groups have largely avoided the March for Life, said Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, a nonprofit organization that supports a person’s constitutional right to abortion. But this year, with Roe vulnerable, Manson said the antiabortion activists “need to be answered.” The group has also planned a demonstration at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in the United States and one of the most prominent Catholic landmarks in D.C. Her group said it would project abortion rights messages on the side of the Basilica on Thursday night.
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“The people coming to this march are coming in very triumphant and very emboldened, with no regard for how this will affect women, how this will affect the poor, how this will affect people of color,” Manson said. “So we have to speak back to them this year.”
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The crowd at the March for Life typically is filled with students from Catholic high schools and colleges, wearing their school gear and carrying signs and banners with antiabortion slogans. Catholic clergy are also very visible, and speakers usually include religious perspectives in their talks. Evangelical groups also attend and hold side events during the week.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, more liberal Christian antiabortion activists bemoaned the appearance at the march of right-wing figures such as Trump and blogger Ben Shapiro, and they feared that the event was becoming strongly politicized.
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Abortion foes in recent years have aimed to highlight more secular, science-based arguments — in 2018 the march’s theme was “pro life is pro science.” However, the religious aspect of the movement remains very prominent “because of the current influence of White evangelicals and Catholics and because the right-to-life movement has also thrown itself into related conflicts about religious liberty in the context of birth control, same-sex marriage, and so on,” abortion movement historian Mary Ziegler said in an email.
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“What is striking is that emphasizing faith — something that once was used against the antiabortion movement — is now something many in the movement embrace,” she wrote.
The role of religion in the movement has been heightened again by the presence in the White House of Joe Biden, a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Some bishops have attacked President Biden’s argument that his faith leads him to respect others’ choices and consciences, and they say he is a dangerous model of a public Catholic.
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Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said this year is the most hopeful year yet for the antiabortion movement because of the Dobbs case before the court. Dannenfelser has been attending the March for Life since 1989 and said that in some years they felt any hope for an end to Roe was “very, very far away.”
“It felt pretty bleak,” she said. But, now, she said, “I see great hope and numbers and enthusiasm.”