On Friday, January 24, 2025, I along with other students from Saint Anselm, participated in the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. What is the March for Life? It is an event where many groups of people from across the United States come together to peacefully demonstrate against abortion. The event began in 1974, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutional right in accordance with the “privacy” rights in the Fourteenth Amendment in the infamous Roe v. Wade case. Ever since then, thousands across the country have come together on an annual basis to protest the court’s decision and speak up for the unborn against the violence of abortion. In 2022, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in what was seen as a culmination of the demonstrations of the Pro-Life movement, so why do we still march every year?

The answer is simple: because abortion is still normalized across the United States. In many states, including my home state of New Jersey, abortion is available on demand without any restrictions, including parental consent for minors or the stage of development of the pregnancy. Eight other states also have no restrictions like New Jersey: Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont. Many other states across the country, such as New Hampshire permit abortion until rather late in pregnancy like 24 weeks. As we have seen in recent referendums, even in so-called “red states,” abortion restrictions have been repealed or not implemented at all. This past November, pro-abortion referendums passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York. Thankfully, some states rejected more liberal abortion laws (Nebraska and South Dakota as well as Florida due to the failure of the amendment to reach 60% of the vote). In years prior, there have been other various abortion referendums that have passed in states that are fairly conservative, such as Kansas and Kentucky. pro-abortion activists will claim this is because people understand abortion as essential, but the truth is that most people do not understand how they have been inundated to support abortion because of selfish motives. Make no mistake, abortion has become a pregnancy fail safe in America, which is being used so that people can engage in hedonistic and vicious behavior.

Since Kamala Harris lost the election in November (who says that prayers aren’t answered), the abortion movement has had some momentum with the new Trump Administration. While Trump publicly distanced himself from the anti-abortion movement during his campaign, he was surely still the lesser of the two evils. Donald Trump has already released several courageous anti-abortion activists who were wrongfully locked up under the Biden Administration for protesting outside of abortion clinics. He also reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits foreign aid funding from going to international organizations that perform abortions (this policy has been implemented by every Republican president since 1985 and repealed by every Democratic president). Trump also wrote in his executive order on gender that there are only two genders, which are given to a child at conception, signalling a semantic change in the executive branch on when life begins.  It is also reassuring to know that the administration does not hate our movement and desire to have us arrested for protesting against this grave injustice. Even if the support is menial or mere flattery, I would rather have the menial support of Trump than the staunch hatred of Biden. We still protest because nearly a million babies are murdered each year through abortion. We still protest because abortion pills are still sold through the mail and sent from all over to harm children in the womb. We still protest because we still do not have a culture of life, as Pope Saint John Paul II called for, where each and every child is cherished and seen as a unique gift from God.