The March for Life is happening today on the streets of Washington, DC. Even though Roe v. Wade has been overturned, this annual march still represents the seminal battle for the complete eradication of abortion in every state. It also raises awareness about other life-related issues like IVF and assisted suicide.

Vice President JD Vance is headlining today’s event, which is wonderful. He is more genuinely pro-life than President Donald Trump, with the added bonus that he and Second Lady Usha Vance are expecting their fourth child in July.

However, one could reasonably argue that this year’s March for Life is especially important.

In the lead-up to his victory in November 2024 and throughout his second term, Donald Trump has been shaky on pro-life issues. His campaign advisers evidently convinced him that the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the issue back to the states could hurt him in the election. It did not.

As the editors of National Review point out, “Trump’s decisive election victory, after Kamala Harris bet heavily on the abortion issue, showed that it was not the third rail that some pundits predicted after Dobbs.”

However, Trump has continued to act like this is a losing issue for the Republicans. He recently asked us to be flexible on the Hyde Amendment in attempting to solve the expanded ObamaCare subsidy tug of war. The Hyde Amendment doesn’t ban abortion, but it does stop federal dollars from funding it except in the cases of rape or incest.

President Trump is also very supportive of in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is a can of ethical worms in and of itself.

Finally, his administration has been slow to walk back the extremism of the Joe Biden era. Under President Biden, the abortion pill was approved to be sent to women who haven’t even visited a doctor. Some have died as a result. The Trump administration has yet to rein that in. The Food and Drug Administration promised to look into the harmful side effects of the abortion pill to mothers, but those findings have yet to be released.

To be fair, there have been plenty of pro-life wins from this administration. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act took away Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood for one year. While this is hardly much, it’s still a win.

President Trump also pardoned those who were imprisoned by Biden’s excessive interpretation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

And this week, the administration announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is no longer using aborted baby parts for its scientific experiments. According to The Daily Wire, “That policy will apply to all NIH grants, cooperative agreements, transaction awards, research and development contracts, and the NIH Intramural Research Program.” This new policy is a significant win for the pro-life cause.

Politically, the pro-life movement is at a crossroads. This was made clear by The Lamp managing editor Nic Rowan, who wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

The president’s support for pro-life positions is provisional. If he believes he needs pro-life votes to win an election, he modifies his views to approximate those of the movement. If he believes he can get by without opposing abortion, he mutes his support. Pro-lifers have to show he needs them to win.

They convinced him in 2016. The president repaid them with three originalist Supreme Court justices. These justices were all in the majority of the Dobbs decision, which in 2022 overturned the high court’s decision in Roe v. Wade and returned the regulation of abortion to “the people and their elected representatives.”

In other words, we need to convince him again. The absolute backwardness of having to convince someone that a preborn baby’s life has immeasurable value and deserves wholesale dignity is a commentary on the perverseness of our culture.

We pray for the marchers and their message. May it reach a receptive president’s ears.