The March for Life is an annual event held every January in Washington, D.C., that marks the gathering of hundreds of thousands of people who come together to acknowledge that life is a sacred, God-given, God-fashioned, and God-ordained, unmerited gift that is to be celebrated and protected. [There are also secular groups and people who participate in the March.] For the last 44 years, since the decision handed down by Roe v. Wade, massive crowds have gathered to be a voice for the millions of children who were never even given a chance at life.
The people who gather at this event desire to see life protected under our Constitution at all stages. Being pro-life is about valuing life — not devaluing either the woman or the baby — because the pro-life mindset starts from the point of view that all life is sacred.
The life-affirming speeches were refreshing to listen to instead of the messages we so often hear that subtly turns pregnancy into a curse or a death sentence for men’s and women’s futures.
Mia Love, the first black female Republican member of Congress shared her powerful and personal story.
Eric Metaxas, a New York Times #1 bestselling author of several books also gave a speech focusing on forgiveness, praying for our enemies, and what abortion ultimately is.
Vice President Mike Pence, the very first vice president and the highest ranking official to ever speak at the March for Life, reminded us in his speech that our Founding Fathers “declared these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [and that we are, all of us], endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Others spoke as well, including Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who now helps others get out of the abortion business and Benjamin Watson, a current NFL star who plays for the Baltimore Ravens. Kellyanne Conway also made an appearance as she spoke to the crowd about standing together to be part of a movement that protects life again.
Being part of this event and personally seeing so many people gathered together for one cause was truly amazing. Actually, it felt very needed, because we live in a culture that is saturated with promoting and commercializing our desire for ease, comfort, efficiency, wealth, and materialism, among so many other self-seeking things. Now babies have become wrapped up in the dilemma of a culture’s selfishness. When they are unplanned, ‘unwanted,’ or perceived to be an inconvenience, we’ve believed a lie that says we have the right to take away another’s human rights if it means saving our own image, career choices, or budgets.
This is largely (but not wholly) why there have been more than 58 million aborted babies since 1973. Taking into account that somewhere between 1.73% and 8.5% of these abortions were reportedly due to the combined problems of rape, incest, health issues for the woman/baby, or pressure from parents/partner to get an abortion, that still leaves us with a total of about 53 – 57 million aborted babies who have been sacrificed for mostly socioeconomic reasons deemed more important than a human life. (For information on why babies conceived in rape still deserve a chance at life, see these stories and these amazing accounts. If you are being forced or pressured into abortion, see this resource.)
The fact that our society has been able to rack up over 58 million abortions in 44 years, and has convinced so many people that a developing baby at week five and week six is just an undeveloped piece of tissue – that an abortion will not really be ending a life – is shocking, especially when considering the advances in science and molecular biology that explicitly prove otherwise. The abortion procedures that produce the broken and torn body parts of that baby also show the reality of what abortion is.
There is indeed a severe issue in our culture that the abortions of over 58 million lives can attest to, but the issue is not the babies. The issue is in the mindsets and hearts of the women and men these babies would be born to. A baby is a natural result of a usually intentional action, and she should not pay with her life for being unplanned and ‘unwanted.’ In no other area of society is a standard like this acceptable.
In the midst of all the cultural nonsense, the 2017 March for Life was a much needed reminder that life is to be protected and celebrated — and so is every new life. Babies are never the problem.
