2017 March for Life on Washington: Wisconsin Abortion Foes Hopeful About Trump

Newly emboldened by the election of President Donald Trump and Republicans’ Congressional sweep, dozens of anti-abortion activists from Wisconsin and thousands from around the country will gather in the nation’s capitol with renewed optimism at Friday’s March for Life, seeing for the first time in decades that an agenda to restrict abortion, if not ban it altogether, has a real shot.

Pro-life activists are buoyed not only by Trump’s pledged support for efforts to defund abortion provider Planned Parenthood, which gets $500,000 million, more than a third of its annual $1.3 billion budget, from the federal government, but also by how he may be able to move the Supreme Court farther right with pro-life justices. Trump has his first chance to shape the court with a nominee to fill the vacancy created with Justice Antonin Scalia’s death almost a year ago. Trump has narrowed his choice to three finalists, and is expected to announce his pick for the Supreme Court next week.

With a ideology shift favoring the pro-life camp’s agenda, the march held annually on or near the Jan. 22, 1973, of the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, has added significance this year. The list of speakers include Vice President Mike Pence, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, and Republicans Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rep. Mia B. Love of Utah and Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey.

Pence said Thursday that he would attend.

Crowd projections for this year’s march vary, but Politico reported Thursday that Trump estimates about 600,000 abortion foes, more than the estimated 500,000 people who participated in last weekend’s Women’s March. When the turnout in sister marches held around the country was added in, the number of people protesting what they fear will be an erosion of rights, including abortion, under the Trump administration was close to 2 million.

Pro-Life Wisconsin Communications Director Jade Hrdi told WBAY-TV that abortion foes are cautiously optimistic that Planned Parenthood will be defunded, while recognizing obstacles remain.

“So even though we do have President Trump and a Republican-controlled legislature, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to get everything that we want, of course not,” Hrdi said. “It’s never going to be like that.”

Chelsea Shields, Wisconsin Right to Life legislative and political action committee director for Wisconsin Right to Life, told Walworth County Today that Trump and Pence “clearly articulated” an anti-abortion agenda during the campaign.

“They have clearly articulated that they will appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices,” Shields said. “This makes us very happy about the future of the right-to-life movement and also those we work to protect.”

The battle is underway at home in Wisconsin, too. Abortion opponents want to ban abortion after 12 weeks pregnancy, which would give the state some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The state is already among 15 that ban abortion after 20 weeks, and the new proposal is one of seven anti-abortion bills before the legislature this year.

In an op-ed in the Journal Sentinel, The Very Rev. Paul B. R. Hartmann, president of Catholic Memorial High School and judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, wrote that the “March for Life is bold statement that America can, and must, make courageous changes. It also is a personal statement of millions who want to transform their world.”

Hartmann and others in the pro-life movement have cause for optimism.

On the fourth day of his presidency Monday, Trump signed an executive order reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prevents the federal government from providing funds to foreign non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion services. It was first enacted by Ronald Reagan, rescinded by Bill Clinton, reinstated by George W. Bush, and rescinded again by Barack Obama.

Trump’s order solidifies his conversion to pro-life Republican orthodoxy, erasing some nagging doubts about his shifting views on abortion, both during the campaign and years before he announced his White House run.

In 1999, he said in an interview with NBC’s Tim Russert that he is “very pro-choice,” but against abortion.

However, he explained in the first Republican debate in 2015 that his view on abortion changed when friends who had planned to terminate a pregnancy changed their minds.

They “were going to have a child, and it was going to get aborted,” he said. “And that child today is a total superstar, a great, great child. And I saw that. And I saw other instances.”

Photo: Demonstrator in front of National Archives on Constitution Avenue during 2015 National March for Life, by Elvert Barnes/Flickr Commons