On the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, a sparse crowd of activists brave snow on March for Life in Washington DC

While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are planning a cascade of ads and events to coincide with the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, hundreds of anti-abortion activists gathered on the National Mall in Washington DC on Friday in hopes of re-energizing a movement that has repeatedly stumbled since Roe’s overturning.

Originally organized around the goal of overturning the Roe precedent that established federal abortion rights, the March for Life has seen what was once its greatest victory become a political liability. In the 18 months since Roe’s demise, abortion rights supporters have trounced anti-abortion activists in state-level ballot referendums. Yet the march’s message was largely similar to past years: speakers and attendees alike talked about the need to make abortion “unthinkable” rather than just illegal – with scant details on how to make that happen.

“We don’t want to just go in and be the bad guys,” said Elijah Persinger, a 19-year-old from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “We want to make make people understand and help them understand the science behind things and the logic that we’re going by as well.”

As in years past, march attendees skewed young. Schools and universities organize trips for students to attend the march, and groups often carry banners and flags with their schools’ names. Some groups all wear bright-colored, matching hats in order to keep from getting lost in the crowd.

Persinger took a 12-hour, overnight bus ride to attend Friday’s March for Life. His group planned to leave DC after the event.

But the crowd on Friday seemed relatively sparse. When the US House speaker, Mike Johnson, stood on a podium to speak, he was met with only muted applause – despite being a high-profile attendee for the march. The greatest response came when he mentioned Biden: when he said that the president’s administration planned to restrict funding to crisis pregnancy centers, the crowd booed loudly.

Organizers also spoke from the stage about the need to support maternity homes and crisis pregnancy centers, facilities that aim to convince people to keep their pregnancies.

“Christians don’t mean to impose what we believe on anyone. But this nation was founded as a Christian nation,” said Laurel Brooks, a march attendee from North Carolina.

Brooks works for an organization called My Faith Votes, which aims to mobilize Christian voters, but she clarified that she was sharing her own views, not her organization’s.

“The foundation of America is truly Christian,” Brooks remarked. “That doesn’t mean we reject, hate, dislike anyone who does not believe as we do. That’s not who Christians are. We accept people for their free will. God honors free will.”

After the speakers finished, marchers spent three hours slowly walking from the National Mall to the steps of the US supreme court. The weather was unusually wintry, with marchers braving wind and several inches of snow.

To keep from getting cold, some marchers danced to the Cha Cha Slide. Others started a call-and-response chant of, “We are pro-life, marching for life, saving the babies, one at a time!”

Icons of fetuses and babies dominated the march. Many carried signs with ultrasound images above phrases such as “Future Doctor”, “Future Dancer”, and “Future Wife”. Others had signs with images of babies above the conservative slogan “Don’t Tread on Me”.

“There are no mistakes, just happy accidents,” read another sign, complete with a hand-drawn beaming baby and portrait of the painter Bob Ross. One young woman even carried a baby made out of snow.

At least one man was trying to sell Trump 2024 merchandise to marchers. But overall, Donald Trump had a minimal presence at the march despite being the frontrunner for the Republican White House nomination as he seeks a second presidency.

Trump has waffled on his stance on abortion: while he has taken credit for installing supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe, he has also suggested that hardline stances on abortion can backfire on Republicans.

“I’m not voting for Trump, I know that much,” said Ali Mumbach, 26. She carried a sign listing police brutality, gun violence and other issues that should matter to anti-abortion activists who call themselves “pro-life”.

“Trump is anti-life, especially in regards to Black lives and the lives of immigrants. So, yeah, I don’t think that he is pro-life. I don’t think that he cares about people who live in poverty. I don’t think he has the best interests of the American people,” Mumbach said.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping sustained outrage over Roe will propel them to victory up and down the general election ballot.

The Biden campaign is now launching a paid media campaign, timed to Roe’s anniversary, to target women and swing voters in battleground states.

Harris plans to appear on Monday in Wisconsin to spotlight post-Roe attacks on reproductive rights before holding a campaign rally alongside Biden in Virginia.

In the November 2023 state elections, Virginia Republicans tried to take control of the state legislature by promising to enact a “reasonable” ban on terminating pregnancies that were 15 weeks or beyond – an effort that failed.

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