The March for Life occurred on Friday, and for the second year in a row, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech during the rally portion of the event.

Vance, who is Catholic, is a stalwart pro-life advocate in the White House and a valuable ally to the movement. He began his speech with the lovely news that he and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, are expecting their fourth child, a son.

Now, some of you may remember that in my remarks last year, I told you all that one of the things I most wanted in the United States of America was more families and more babies. So, let the record show you have a vice president who practices what he preaches. Usha and I announced [last] week that we’re expecting our fourth, and it will be our third baby boy. So we’ll take whatever prayers you can give. We certainly need them.

Vance went on to focus on the achievements of this second Trump administration in promoting the pro-life movement. He discussed rolling back the atrocities of the Biden administration, releasing pastors and grandmothers who were arrested for praying outside of abortion clinics, stopping the National Institutes of Health from using aborted babies’ tissue for experiments, and not allowing our taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for abortions abroad.

He also addressed “the elephant in the room,” which is the pro-life movement’s discontent with how this administration is slow-walking its handling of murder-by-mail abortion pills, as well as the Food and Drug Administration’s review of mifepristone, whose original flawed study has cost several women their lives.

He pointed listeners back to the fact that Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, was a major victory and more will come — but we have to be “prudential.” He explained:

There will inevitably be debates within this movement. We love each other, but we’re going to have open conversations about how best to use our political system to advance life, how prudential we must be in the cause of advancing human life. I think these are good, honest, and natural debates. And, frankly, they’re not just good for all of you. They help keep people like me honest. And that’s an important thing.

Vance ended his speech by hitting home the March for Life theme: that life is a gift and celebrating it separates us from paganism and barbarism. Vance warned:

From the skeletons in brothels to the child sacrifice of Mayans, the mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded rather than the blessings to be cherished that they are. But the inheritance of our civilization is something else: the fact that the Scripture tells us that each life is fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator. The March for Life, my friends, it’s not just about a political issue, as important as all this political stuff is. It’s about whether we remain a civilization under God, or whether we ultimately return to the paganism that dominated the past.

Vance also reiterated that he was the pro-life movement’s “ally in the White House.” It truly was a heartening speech.

However, the abortion fight is far from over. Yes, we have come a long way, and Dobbs was a monumental decision that was long overdue. At the same time, abortions are on the rise, and most of them are occurring through the use of the abortion pill. Abortion is always deadly. It kills an innocent preborn baby, and the abortion pill adds a level of danger and further isolation to the mother.

“Tepid support for LIFE equals tepid support for the GOP from voters who deserve to be prioritized,” Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins told National Review. “Not only do we have the best voter intensity, we have the clearest vision: An America in which children in the womb are protected in law and in service, and in which their mothers get the help they need. That’s what we vote for, and that’s an agenda worth fighting for.”

Indeed, that agenda is what we all should be pushing for. A recent Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll found that “67% of Americans support placing legal limits on abortion, and that 57% support limiting abortions to at most the first three months of pregnancy.” Furthermore, “84% of Americans support pregnancy resource centers, which offer support to mothers both during their pregnancy and after their baby is born.”

Perhaps we should be prudent and strategic on the political end. However, that’s hard to do personally when you know innocent lives are on the line.

As for Vice President JD Vance, we are thankful for his pro-life influence in the White House, and we hope that he can move the needle on some of these more immediate and pressing abortion issues.