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At March for Life, Advocates Cheer On VP J.D. Vance’s Pro-Life Message

By Aleja Hertzler-McCain
march for life
A family and other pro-life advocates hold up signs as they pass the U.S. Capitol building during the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2025. (Photo: Paul Haring / X)

After a presidential campaign in which anti-abortion activists lamented that their issue had faded from the GOP’s agenda, the first March for Life in the second Trump administration roared their approval as President Trump appeared by video and Vice President J.D. Vance spoke to them live from a stage erected on the National Mall on Friday.

“I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance told a chilly but enthusiastic crowd sprinkled with red MAGA hats. “ I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”

Vance said the new administration would focus on making “it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids.”

He also touted Trump’s pardon Thursday of 23 anti-abortion activists, some of whom had been prosecuted for blockading an abortion clinic and sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Trump, in a pre-recorded video, said, “ It was my honor to grant a full and complete pardon to Paula (Harlow) and many others who were the victims of this horrific weaponization.”

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j.d. vance march for life
Vice President J.D. Vance addresses the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2025. (Video screengrab)

Many at the march gave Trump and Vance glowing reviews for the administration’s approach to issues that for them fall under the “pro-life” banner — such as  opposition to abortion, a belief in two distinct genders and support for disabled people.

“I would give (the new administration) an A-plus-plus-plus-plus,” said the Rev. Nabil Nour, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod minister who said he had frequently raised money for a crisis pregnancy center with a long-distance bicycle campaign. “ They have the vision, not on earthly living, but on heavenly living,” he said of the Republican politicians who spoke at the rally.

Trump and Vance have supported government funding for in vitro fertilization and continuing the availability of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions as well as some types of high blood sugar, and said during the 2024 campaign that Trump would veto a national abortion ban if it landed on his desk.

Addressing the crowd, Lila Rose, the president of advocacy group Live Action, who at one point last year said she would not vote for Trump because of his abortion views but later endorsed him, renewed her call to “abolish abortion” but did not criticize Trump or Vance, instead praising Trump for the pardons.

In an interview, Patrick Stanton, an activist who stands outside Philadelphia abortion clinics “every day” to preach “ the message of chastity and pro-life,” said that Vance “ just needs to be educated” on IVF. “ He probably wasn’t educated,” he said.

march for life pro life
Participants in the annual March for Life rally walk in Washington, D.C., Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)

Nevertheless, Stanton expressed concern that the anti-abortion plank was removed from the Republican Party platform at the GOP convention in July, saying they “slipped a little bit.” He said that concern prompted him to come to Washington for the march, even as he and others from Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, have been demonstrating at the statehouse in Harrisburg to influence Pennsylvania lawmakers to ban abortion in the state.

Stanton, who said he knows a few of those pardoned personally, had enthusiastic praise for Trump’s pardons.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision in 2022, March for Life organizers have also encouraged anti-abortion activists to focus their attention on statehouses, where decisions over the legality of abortion are now being made.

As protesters arrived at the national march, they had to contend with an extensive security screening by the Secret Service around the perimeter of the rally. One of Stanton’s fellow parishioners from Immaculate Conception repeatedly set off a metal detector before finding his rosary in his pocket.

Once inside, they heard from a series of Republicans, with organizers noting that this year was the first time that the Senate Majority leader and the speaker of the House both addressed the marchers.

“ Now we have President Donald J. Trump back in the White House, we are entering a new era,” Johnson told the crowd. “ I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception rather than birth.” He touted the House’s passage of the  Born Alive Survivors Protection Act on Thursday, which would require medical personnel to sustain an infant’s life if it survived an attempted abortion. (It had earlier failed to pass a cloture vote in the Senate, with Democrats holding that the bill would not increase protections for infants while increasing risk for providers.)

lila rose march for life
Live Action President Lila Grace Rose and other pro-life advocates hold up signs during the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2025. (Photo: Live Action / X)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose state is one of the few to have defeated an abortion rights ballot amendment since the fall of Roe, told the crowd, “ We were told since Dobbs by people, political consultants, pundits, many people that are more establishment Republicans, that standing for the right to life was somehow terrible politics, you wouldn’t get elected, all this other stuff. Well, I can tell you, I’m proof that that’s not true.”

Some prominent religious leaders in the crowd were cautious in their judgments of the new administration. Metropolitan Tikhon, who leads the Orthodox Church in America, told media, “It’s a little too soon” to evaluate the new administration’s approach, but “ it does seem like the direction that they’re going in is to be positive for the pro-life movement.”

strickland march for life
Bishop Joseph Strickland, center, takes photos with attendees at the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)

Bishop Joseph Strickland, who led the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, before being removed by Pope Francis after a formal investigation of his management, told media, “It’s a real opportunity with the new administration, we have some hope.”

But he cautioned that “we still have a lot of hearts that need to be changed. I hope that’s what we focus on.”

Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told media that partisan flavor of the rally was unproductive. “We need to bring people into the pro-life fold,” Day said. “ It pushes people the other direction.”

Day praised Trump for his pardons of anti-abortion activists and urged the administration to bolster the social safety net and to make lowering the cost of giving birth “a major priority,” explaining she was worried that some of those programs would be cut. Day also said that the organization would be pushing for paid leave.

bethany hamilton
Professional surfer Bethany Hamilton addresses the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2025. (Video screengrab)

Many participants and speakers expressed hope that abortion rights advocates’ minds would change if they were given the right information.

“ These people aren’t inherently evil, they’re just being fed lies. And the more they hear these lies, the more they believe them,” said Bethany Hamilton, a surfer who lost her arm to a shark attack and who was a keynote speaker at the march.

Hamilton encouraged attendees to find ways to support pregnant women.

Heather Lawless, who works with Reliance Ministries to provide a range of services to pregnant women in northern Idaho, told media she lives that out. 

“ It’s the church’s job, not the government’s job, to take care of these women,” the nondenominational Christian said.

Aleja Hertzler-McCain is a national reporter for Religion News Service based in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

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26 Responses

  1. “ These people aren’t inherently evil, they’re just being fed lies. And the more they hear these lies, the more they believe them,”

    I need to remember Bethany Hamilton’s quote when considering pro-life people. I know they’re well meaning, but they’re so misinformed, and believe so many lies. We know the ways to effectively reduce abortion, but the pro-life movement is held captive by Republicans who just want to ban abortion, which is largely ineffective, rather than SOLVE abortion. It’s too bad.

  2. God considers the life of the unborn as valuable as a grown person and prescribes punishment for those who harm the unborn.

    Exodus 21:22-23:

     “Now if people struggle with each other and strike a pregnant woman so that she gives birth prematurely, but there is no injury, the guilty person shall certainly be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life,  eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

    God knows us before we are born and has a purpose for us.

    Jeremiah 1:4-5:

    The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
    “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
        before you were born, I set you apart;
        I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

    God is personally involved in our formation before birth.

    Psalm 139:13-14

    For you formed my inward parts;
        you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
    I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;

    God has a plan for our days before we are born:

    Psalm 139:16

    Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
    in your book were written, every one of them,
     the days that were formed for me,
        when as yet there was none of them.

    1. The first verse doesn’t prove what you are supposing it to prove!

      Psalm 139:21-22, should we follow that? Or does that co trading Jesus message? Or it poetry that is not indicative of Godly political policy?

    2. One Olsen,

      Most people do not believe the verse “so that she gives birth prematurely, but there is no injury,” includes the prematurely born child, without injury, with the mother.

      That is how broken christianity has become, and how those who want to live a they will, seek to find “scripture” to support abortion, and the how worthless an unborn child is in a lot of christian hearts.

      1. In ancient Judiasm, life begins with first breath- if the fetus was born and takes a breath, it achieves “personhood” and is treated as such. Well- in some cases- at some periods of Jewish history personhood was conferred at a time after birth, because so many babies didn’t survive long.

        We have to deal with the Bible on the terms it was written, considering what thee writers and readers would have held true in our understanding. Do we know more now? sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that in biblical times, unborn children were not “persons”.

  3. Hi One. you’re misinterpreting those passages to fit your narrative.

    In Exodus, that passage is assigning the price of a lost fetus as a property crime, not that of the cost of killing a person. it says the opposite of what you claim.

    The other three are clearly metaphorical, and are speaking of God’s foreknowledge, not fetal personhood. A consistent Biblical hermeneutic would acknowledge that the Hebrew people believed that “life” and personhood begins at first breath. You are projecting your modern scientific knowledge onto scripture, and then interpreting it through that lens, which is leading you to incorrect conclusions.

    If you take the Bible as a whole, there is just as much evidence that God doesn’t particularly care about children (born or unborn) as there is that God does. God kills all the first born in Egypt, born or not, commands the death of all living things in the conquest of the promised land, including women and children, and specifically commanded the death of Isaac as a show of loyalty.

    In fact, the Psalmist ALSO asks God to dash his enemies babies on rocks.

    If you find that that the Bible uni-vocally supports your position, you are reading your position into the Bible, not getting it FROM the Bible.

    Now, if you want to talk about solutions to abortion- I’m game, because there are few key ones that would greatly reduce unplanned pregnancies, which is the biggest reason.

    1. Jen you use the same rhetoric based on your perspective . You stated you came out of a background that believed the Bible is the absolute authority and now you do not. So why are you to be trusted as an authority of biblical theology or even systematic theology? You contradict yourself and attack those with whom you have a fundamental issue with. Your perspective is isogetical and lacks clear exegetical rigor. You have recommend authors on various topics to support your views. The apostle Paul warns believers about those who are “Claiming to be wise, they became fools,”. You attack people who disagree and state as if you are enlightened. In many posts your views are antithetical to consistent fundamental biblical understanding.

      1. Every accusation by Jason Westmas is clearly an indictment of his own logic. No attempts at refuting anything she said, and clearly his lack of understanding of how the Bible was written, who it was written for, and how to interpret it are deficient!

    2. Jen, please share your thoughts about effective ways to reduce unplanned pregnancies. I’m interested in your thoughts.

      1. Dawn- Thanks for asking.

        The most effective ways to reduce abortion are to reduce unplanned pregnancies, reduce poverty, and increase education and opportunity.

        The second two are systemic issues that are, admittedly, very slow and hard to implement, but the first one is simple and incredibly effective. In Colorado Springs, they implemented a program to offer free IUDs to teens and cut the teen abortion rate by 64% in the last 8 years (and saved $70 on services). If birth control was free, easy to use, and easy to obtain for everyone, it would likely halve the abortion rate, which is a strong start.

        https://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/30/colorado-teen-pregnancy-abortion-rates-drop-free-low-cost-iud/

        Next, the top reason given for choosing abortion is the financial strain of having a baby, then raising a child. If we had better social safety nets, maternal supports, and child supports- this would make it financially possible for women to continue pregnancies (and would also address several of the other reasons given). If we want to increase the birthrate, as JD Vance said, we need to not just make it financially possible, but make it financially comfortable. Currently the message women who get social safety services get is “you shouldn’t have had a baby if you can’t afford it”- this is contradictory to wanting every baby born. https://www.verywellhealth.com/reasons-for-abortion-906589

        These solutions may not lead to zero abortions yet, but they sure would make a huge difference.

        1. I’d also like to add more funding for more medical research on women’s bodies of all ages. In my line of work, as I’ve learned more about the medical research conducted on men in comparison to women, the gap in funding, tenure, and depth of research is ASTOUNDING.
          We are still WAY behind in truly understanding the long term impacts and implications of current lifestyles (e.g., foods, medications, exercise, other medical exams, etc) on women – which leaves them more vulnerable to medical conditions that can warrant the need for abortion (via endangering the mother, the risk of ecoptic pregnancies, and the like). We need to close the gap here.

  4. God hates the shedding of innocent blood. Ezekiel 16:21

    He loves children, unborn and born.

    Psalm 127:3
    Children are a blessing from the Lord.

    Psalm 119:73
    Your hands made me and formed me.

    Psalm 119:159
    Preserve my life according to your love.

    Matthew 19:14
    Let the little children come to me.

    Mark 10:16
    He took the children in his arms.

    The Good News is that there is always love and forgiveness in Jesus for those who turn to him.

    Psalm 65:2-4
    O, you who hear prayer,
    to you all people will come.
    When we were overwhelmed with our sins, you forgave All our transgressions. Blessed are those you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts.

  5. I wish both sides would stop with the extreme views of the other (not all pro-choice women are promiscuous, career-obsessed, God-haters; not all pro-lifers are overly-religious, judgmental, modern-medicine haters; and as a woman who never got the chance to have a family, I am not a “childless cat lady who is anti-family”; I prefer dogs, and my inability to have a family will remain a pain in my heart that I repeatedly lay at the foot of the cross). I believe when all of the accusations stop, both sides can focus on addressing the questions that are at the heart of the matter:

    – WHY is abortion viewed as an option to a woman? What can we do to significantly reduce this option?
    – What is the role of government in this (if the government can’t force you to get a vaccine, what can it force you to do when it comes to a pregnancy)?
    – What does outlawing abortion REALLY look like (e.g., let’s remember the days of back alleys; and are we going to drag pregnant women into court to “prove” they need abortions?)?

    When I think of the variety of situations I’ve come across at shelters –
    a married woman who didn’t believe in birth control, yet her body was SO tired upon her 11th pregnancy, multiple doctors told her carrying to term would be dangerous; a young woman who was impregnated by a molester in her family; a pregnant teen who was thrown out….I could go on – there is NO “one size fits all” solution. But I do feel there is one common belief of both sides: abortions should be rare. So how can we get there?
    Answering the questions above is a start.

  6. Just for fun, here’s Exodus 21:22 from the Septuagint:
    “22 And if two men are fighting and they strike a pregnant woman and her child comes out unformed, he shall suffer a financial penalty; according to whatever the husband of the woman may impose, he shall pay with a judicial assessment. 23 But if her child was formed, he shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

    I do not support abortion. At the same time, I have to be honest that there is ambiguity. I don’t know if an embryo has a soul. If God knows the number of our days, and only God can destroy a soul, can I say for certain what exactly is being destroyed, particularly in early stages of development? I am quite confident that taking a pill is not analogous to burning a live, conscious baby to Molech. Maybe people could take us more seriously if we’d lose some of the fanatism.

  7. These comments are scary. They do not reflect a biblical perspective of the sin of abortion. These comments must be plagiarized from, “Heresy for Dummies.” Many of you have in past comments have stated that you do not believe in the absolute authority of Scripture. Then you opine on what scripture says and means. You have created a false dilemma. Lacking objective reasoning. In past threads you have recommended some author that reflects your view vs answering theological questions. You can say I am arrogant and etc…. However, scripture is crystal on how to study and how to deal with a promotion of a false gospel. Those who proclaim a higher knowledge.

    1. Jason – not sure if you’re talking about what I shared, but to you, I pose this:
      Ok, abortion is a sin. So now what? Going around “right fighting” isn’t stopping it. Going around saying “I know what the scripture says and you don’t” isn’t stopping it. This is what is so frustrating to me: a bunch of spiritual grandstanding on “I’m right, I know the Bible and you don’t!” isn’t stopping abortion.
      I posed clear questions that get to the heart of the matter: understanding WHY women view it as an option (and that answer is unlikely to be the same for all women, as I posed a few very different scenarios that all introduced abortion as an option), so that we can address it and prevent it from being such a common option.
      Correct me if I’m wrong or missing something, but I don’t think preaching “I’m right, I know the Bible and you don’t” to any of the women I presented in the scenario above will do that.

    2. Total straw man arguments by Jason Westmas. Clearly you’ve beaten these evil non Bible believing people whose comments you’ve scoured this website to understand completely their orthodoxy!

    3. The Scriptures are only authoritative, when it lines up with their worldview, there are a lot of hard truths that christians do not want face.

      During Bible studies I have seen “grown up” people loose their tempers, scream, turn red, and the tear pages of someones copy of the bible, or slap/hit it, because they refused to accept the authority of what God or Jesus taught.

      1. The irony here, Andrew, is that conservatives are the ones I see throwing tantrums when shown that the Bible doesn’t line up with their asserted “biblical” worldview. When shown how many children God kills or ordered killed in the same Old Testament that they’re using to say God values children in the womb. When shown that the “authoritative scriptures” consistently say that “life” begins with first breath. (Gen 2, Ex 21, and the prevailing belief of Jews at that time as evidenced by the similarity of the words “breath”- נְשִׁימָה and “spirit”-רוּחַ or “soul”-נֶפֶשׁ, according to Hebrew scholars.).

        Many evangelicals even here just flat out reject anything different than what they’ve been taught, and are unwilling to consider that they may have been taught incorrectly. Of course, they are VERY able to see where anyone who doesn’t agree with their interpretation of Scripture has been taught incorrectly.

  8. There was only one pro-life candidate in the 2024 POTUS election: Randall Terry. Trum/Vance said they would not pursue a Federal Abortion ban or banning life terminating drugs, like Mifepristone. It is tragic that after SCOTUS threw out Roe, life terminations actually increased because of Mifepristone. Another point to consider, abortion as defined as they termination of a pregnancy, while pregnancy is defined as they development of a baby on the womb. Thus abortion as they termination of a life, because dead babies are no longer developing. The pro- abortion groups publicize cases where women with dead babies on their wombs couldn’t get the baby removed because doctors refused to do the procedure. But, as they definitions show, that has nothing to do with abortion. Any woman who needs an evacuation of a miscarried baby can legally have at done in the entire USA.

    1. Jon, unfortunately because of the unclear lexicon – and people standing ready to shut down the conversation as soon as the word “abortion” comes up – a lot of doctors are afraid. Removing a dead fetus is a medical procedure referred to as an abortion; and given that we have encouraged people to “tell on” those who perform abortions, you have doctors backing away from performing such a procedure.
      We also have women with dying fetuses being hauled into court to prove the fetus is dying so that they can get the necessary treatment (look what happened in Texas and Tennessee). Every day that the attorney general made these women wait so that he could make a medical decision he is unqualified to make, their health was at risk (and they were in physical and emotional pain), but extreme pro-lifers didn’t care.
      We need to stop the overreacting to have conversations about these nuances so they can be properly addressed. No one wants doctors to be too afraid to do what is necessary. That’s a Pandora’s box we need to keep shut.

    2. Jon – yes, sad that pro-life was dropped from the GOP platform. Hopefully there is repentance of the many who have approved and participated in the taking of life of 60million babies unborn. I confess that when I was young I was pro-choice, and ignoring the fact that giving children to the Abortion Beast was murder. To quote a phrase – one day “there will be hell to pay” for America.

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