March For Life In Washington: Michigan Abortion Foes Buoyed By Trump Presidency

(Updated) Newly emboldened by the election of President Donald Trump and Republicans’ Congressional sweep, anti-abortion activists from Michigan and 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.

Activists like Laura Alexandria, the director of operations for the the Grand Rapids affiliate of Right to Life of Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press that 12 buses will depart Michigan Washington, D.C., for Friday’s march from the National Mall to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court building. They’re almost at capacity.

Alexandria said many pro-life activists felt shut out of last week’s massive Women’s March in Washington and sister marches across the country, where a major theme was the degree to which a woman’s right to an abortion might be restricted by the Trump administration.

“After the inauguration and the Women’s March on D.C., our phone has been ringing off the hook with more people wanting to get on our bus trips,” Alexandria told Free Press.

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.

The national president of March for Life, Jeanne Mancini, told the Free Press activists will march with “renewed vigor and interest this year, with the hope of the new administration passing some pro-life policies.”

The pro-life movement has 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