James Smith, who runs a mentorship program in Rochester, N.Y., brought his students to the March for Life because he wanted them to know the importance of celebrating life.
Smith and his students joined the throngs gathered Friday around the Washington Monument to rally and to mourn the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling—which many of them view as legalizing abortion on demand across the nation.
Bundled in mittens and scarves, children, teenagers and adults united under clusters of yellow balloons displaying a single word: life.
“We’re here to celebrate life,” Smith, director of St. Michael’s Woodshop, told The Daily Signal. “It’s an 8- or 9-hour trip, but we wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s a great opportunity to teach our students the meaning of life and how to celebrate it.”
A woman named Mary, who identified herself as a member of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Connecticut, said she felt compelled to attend.
“I’m here because I believe it isn’t enough to say that I believe in something, and then sit on my armchair at home,” she said. “I’ve got to stand up.”
In a similar vein, Patrick Kelly, chairman of the March for Life, told the crowd at one point:
Each of you has a key role to play today. We must stand up for truth, the truth that to be pro-life is to be pro-woman.
The 2016 theme for the March for Life, “Pro-Life Is Pro-Woman,” also was reflected in the comments of Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, former Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk, and Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., among others.
“Some say there is a war on women,” Ernst said, addressing the crowd. “I reject that. I am a woman. I have been to war. This is no war on women.”
Rather, the Army National Guard veteran said, “To be pro-life is to have deep respect for life, and for women’s unique ability to bring it into the world.”
Jewels Green, a former abortion worker who had an abortion at 17 and now is part of the pro-life Silent No More Awareness Campaign, had her own story. Green told the crowd:
When I was a pregnant teen, there was no one. No one was pro-life. No one supported my choice to parent. I was alone, so I surrendered. … I tried to believe what everyone was insisting—that it was no big deal, that I should just get over it. But I missed my baby.
Birk, a Super Bowl champion with the Ravens, joked: “I’m a football player so I have to keep things simple.” He added:
I march because I’ve never heard a woman give birth to a baby and say, ‘I wish I’d had an abortion.’ I’ve never heard a woman say, ‘I wish I had fewer kids,’ and I’ve never heard a worker at a life clinic say that they wished they worked in an abortion clinic.
“To see a baby born is a miracle, pure joy,” Birk added. “In this world, don’t we need more miracles, more joy, and more love?”
Smith said he hopes to see more miracles realized with the help of more pro-life legislation. The New Jersey Republican encouraged the crowd to look forward to this week’s potential congressional override of President Barack Obama’s veto of a measure defunding Planned Parenthood for a year.
Obama, in a formal statement released Friday by the White House, said the Roe v. Wade ruling “affirmed a woman’s freedom to make her own choices about her body and her health.”
The president also promised that his administration will “redouble” its commitment to “protecting a woman’s access to safe, affordable health care and her right to reproductive freedom.”