‘More Babies In The United States Of America’: Trump, Vance Signal New Era At March For Life
WASHINGTON — As the federal government weighed protecting survivors of violent abortion procedures and the civil rights of peaceful pro-life protesters, tens of thousands of pro-life advocates marched in the nation’s capital on Friday. They celebrated the life-affirming sea change in D.C. after Republicans took control of the legislature and the presidency.
But attendees and nonprofit leaders alike know that winning the election was only the beginning. Now, with President Donald Trump sworn in and Republicans in control of the House and Senate, the real work can begin.
As marcher Rose Cordier, a high school student from Cincinnati, Ohio, told The Federalist, the reason she traveled and weathered below-freezing temperatures was to “abolish abortion in America” completely — the goal of nearly everyone at the march. But she is excited to see the Trump administration “fund pro-life facilities and try and eliminate funding for abortion facilities.”
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Many attendees supported those same measures, not only as a way to stop the government-funded killing of unborn babies, but also to create a society where it is easy to decide to give life to a child with the help of organizations like crisis pregnancy centers.
‘More Babies in the United States of America’
Vice President J.D. Vance, who spoke at the rally, certainly gave the pro-lifers a boost of confidence with his speech, in which he stressed not only being pro-life, but also pro-family. He underlined the need to have “more babies in the United States of America.”
“We march to protect the unborn. We march to proclaim and live out the sacred truth that every single child is a miracle and a gift from God,” Vance told the crowd to raucous applause. “The task of our movement is to protect innocent life, it’s to defend the unborn, and it’s also to be pro-family and pro-life in the fullest sense of that word possible.”
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“We need a culture that celebrates life at all stages, one that recognizes and truly believes that the benchmark of national success is not our GDP number or our stock market, but whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country,” he continued. “We failed a generation, not only by permitting a culture of abortion-on-demand, but also by neglecting to help young parents achieve the ingredients they need to lead a happy and meaningful life. A culture of radical individualism took root, one where the responsibilities and joys of family life were seen as obstacles to overcome, not as personal fulfillment or personal blessings.”
Vance’s speech came amid a fight in Congress to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which Trump endorsed, as well as efforts to curtail the FACE Act. The Biden administration utilized the FACE Act in its lawfare scheme to jail peaceful pro-life protesters — 23 of whom Trump recently pardoned in one of his first actions as the 47th president.
‘Stand Up for Precious Little Babies’
In a video speech to those at the March for Life event, Trump vowed to “stand up for precious little babies,” adding, “we will protect the historic gains we have made and stop the radical Democrat push for a federal right to unlimited abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth and even after birth. Think of that, after birth, and some people want that.”
Trump said the era of Justice Department weaponization against pro-life Americans is over.
Many marchers said they would like to see a reverse in funding, where any money that had been used to pad the pockets of abortionists like Planned Parenthood could be stripped from them to help pregnancy centers, which receive much less in taxpayer funds but allow pregnant and post-partum women and their children in need to thrive.
‘I Am My Mother’s Crisis Pregnancy’
Those organizations do life-saving work, Cristina Genung, another attendee from Cincinnati, told The Federalist. They saved hers.
Genung described her mother’s harrowing story, where both crisis pregnancy centers and divine intervention played a role in guiding her mother toward choosing not to have her aborted.
Genung’s mother was pregnant out of wedlock and somewhat desperate when the first doctors she saw in California cited the then-newly-decided Roe v. Wade decision, pressuring her to end Cristina’s life before she was even born.
“‘Hey, we just passed a law, you know, Roe v. Wade, and so we can take care of this for you. You can’t afford to be pregnant right now. You have no husband, no money,’” Genung said, paraphrasing the doctors. “And she was gonna do it. She was gonna go through with it. And she just felt so ashamed. She even went into a church and said, ‘God, look at me. Look at how low I’ve stooped.’ But then my dad tracked her down in California and said, ‘You’re going to a real doctor. That wasn’t a real doctor.’ And he took her back to El Paso, and they had me, and my grandfather started to catechize her.”
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Genung said the pressure from so-called “doctors” who choose to perform abortions is intense. “Women are manipulated into thinking they don’t have a choice,” she said. “The whole ‘pro-choice’ movement is a misnomer because they don’t allow women to know what their choices are.” Pregnancy centers, Genung explained, give them the real, tangible ability to have their child without fear.
Genung and others believe that raising awareness of these centers’ existence should be a top priority for the White House, especially after Democrats and the Biden regime demonized such institutions for the last four years. Awareness of the help women can receive from crisis pregnancy centers, coupled with the building of a culture of life and a strong Christian faith, can help Americans reverse course from their half-century-long infatuation with abortion.
“I’ve thought a lot about how I ended up not being aborted, and I think that it has a lot to do with my grandparents passing on the faith to their son, and my dad knowing what the truth is, and that all human life is sacred,” Genung said. “And you know, had my dad not stepped in, I probably wouldn’t be here. So it’s really important for all people, doctors and everybody, but especially men, to protect their children and to help women know that it’s going to be okay if they get pregnant, and if they go through and have the baby, that it’s going to be okay. And then once they do, there’s such joy that comes from every child.”
‘We’re Not Aborting. I Love This Child’
Ann Cordier, Rose’s mother, also spoke with The Federalist, detailing her run-ins with doctors who pushed relentlessly to get her to abort her other daughter, Sophia, whose second ultrasound showed heart defects.
Cordier said that, while that news was obviously difficult to hear, “What was worse is that the doctor and the ultrasound technician wanted me to abort. They kept pressuring me. They said, ‘We can get you in.’ They just kept coming at me with, ‘You need to abort. This child’s not going to live. This child won’t even survive birth.”
At every step of the way, Cordier was forced to advocate for the life of her own child, while those charged with attempting to save the unborn child’s life were constantly advocating for killing her.
“I said, ‘We’re not aborting. I love this child before I knew any information about her, and I still love her today, and she’s worth every effort that I can give,’” Cordier stated.
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Sophia ended up living five months after being born with no complications, contrary to the doctors’ predictions that she wouldn’t even survive birth.
“She was fine, and she lived for five months, and she was really a blessing to our community,” Cordier said. “Everyone just rallied around her and me. I felt so blessed, even though I felt there was like this mixture of joy and grief, you know, because every day we didn’t know if it would be her last — but then all the prayers, all the blessings. It also was a time of joy.”
Rose, for her part, said she knows that the issue of life will ultimately need to be decided by law or the Supreme Court, defining what life means and when it begins. For the foreseeable future, however, she does not anticipate that happening.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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