WASHINGTON -- Thousands of abortion opponents will gather today on the National Mall for the 44th annual March for Life, just days into the presidency of Donald Trump, who has made abortion one of his first priorities in office.
With a likely eye toward rewarding voters who supported him based heavily on expectations that he would act on abortion, Trump already has revived an old policy banning U.S. funding for groups abroad that pay for abortions or provide information about abortion. On Tuesday, he signaled his intentions to nominate an anti-abortion justice to the Supreme Court next week, and he has vowed more action to follow.
Vice President Mike Pence will speak to the activists, a senior White House official confirmed, and march organizers said Kellyanne Conway, Trump's senior counselor, also will give a speech. March organizers have extended an invitation to Trump.
Other Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have spoken to the march in previous years, but remotely.
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"It's going to be extremely joyful," Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said of this year's march. "People know action is coming. ... [Trump] made his pro-life promises, and the pro-life movement is excited about those promises."
The first march was held one year after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a right to abortion nationwide in 1973. Subsequent marches have been held on or near the Jan. 22 anniversary every year since.
The past eight years' marches have been sparse affairs, with tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists gathering to show their solidarity and restate their opposition with little expectation of change.
This year, marchers say change seems imminent. "It's hard to describe the mood," said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life.
Mancini brightly rattled off her four demands for Trump and the new Republican 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 nationwide law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy; and stop all federal funding for Planned Parenthood unless the organization were to stop performing abortions.
To keep the support of abortion opponents, Mancini said Trump must accomplish "those four things. All of them by this time next year."
Mancini and many others involved in the march noted that many in the movement had serious reservations about Trump as a candidate. "Some of the comments about women -- it gave us all pause. A lot of pause," she said. Still, Trump won most of their votes by vowing to appoint anti-abortion judges, among other promises.
In addition to Pence and Conway, three Republican members of Congress -- Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rep. Mia Love of Utah and Rep. Christopher Smith of N.J. -- will speak before the group at the rally before participants march from the Mall to the Supreme Court, their annual route. Along with Catholic and evangelical leaders, the two guests bringing some star power to the march are Baltimore Ravens player Benjamin Watson and Mexican telenovela actress Karyme Lozano.
Last weekend's Women's March listed abortion access as one of its official demands and dropped an anti-abortion group from the list of official partners. Many women who opposed abortion changed their minds about going, and others who appeared with their anti-abortion signs were met with loud shouts of "my body, my choice" by other marchers.
Toni Papp will have the Women's March in mind when she attends the March for Life, her 17th. She was impressed by the gathering's size and passion, but not by its stance on abortion. "It did not respect what I think empowerment of women is. It did not respect all human beings, because it supported killing human baby girls," said Papp, who runs the youth ministry at Holy Family Catholic Church in Prince William County, Va.
Aimee Murphy, the founder of Life Matters Journal, joined the Women's March despite the abortion-rights plank. Murphy, 28, said she received a range of reactions, from people who said "thank you for being here" to others who yelled at her.
At today's march, Murphy said she will call participants to "a more consistent approach to the right to life" and ask them to "appreciate the feminist part of pro-life."
"We can't just love the baby," Murphy said. "We have to stand for the rights of the woman."
Information for this article was contributed by Perry Stein of The Washington Post and by Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times.
A Section on 01/27/2017