What I saw, felt, and heard at the 2025 March For Life

By God's grace, I got there! Here's what I experienced

“I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.”

—Walt Whitman

Yesterday, January 25th, was my 54th birthday. I was born in 1971, almost exactly two years before the Supreme Court passed Roe V Wade.

Every year, then, the anniversary of that oft-termed “landmark” case, which made abortion legal by judicial fiat in all 50 states of the Union, takes place right around my birthday. I can’t help but feel a certain discomfiting significance in this temporal proximity. Of course, I was a “wanted” baby, thanks be to God, and my parents wouldn’t have had me killed in my mother’s womb even if it had been legal to do so in the year that I was born. Still, one gets the impression, even if it only amounts to a kind of astrological superstition, of having dodged a cosmic bullet.

Two days ago, I attended the March for Life in Washington DC for the first time ever in my life. As I record in my prior missive, I almost didn’t make it, due to the manifestation of a freak Southern snowstorm, and the resultant cancellation of all flights leaving my hometown (even after the diminution of the storm!). Yet through the kindness of a stranger, a new path was cleared for me, a way was shown, and I managed, by hook and by crook, and eventually by rail, to grapple my way northwards to the Capital, that “sepulchral city” so recently rocked by the upheaval of a pronounced partisan power shift, sending shockwaves all over this troubled republic.

By the grace of God, I was thus able to show up for this event, which I had perceived some sort of call to attend a short time ago.

I later discovered that I had turned out to be the sole representative of the local diocese from Savannah proper who was able to obtain passage to DC. Everyone else from my hometown, including the man in charge of assembling the group, as well as our resident bishop, had been forced to remain home.

On Friday, the day of the March, I was able to locate a group of others from other parts of the diocese who had flown up from Macon, which was hit less hard by that fleetfooted sprite Winter Storm Enzo. Together we strode to the National Mall area, where we were immediately subjected to searches and seizures reminiscent of a public airport, at the hands of the Secret Service, no less.

Marchers were frisked by the SS

“Oh, the Secret Service is in charge of security, I’m sure we’ll be safe now,” I couldn’t help but mutter, memories of Trump’s aborted rally in Butler, Pennsylvania swimming through my head.

The reason for the beefed-up presence of the SS was, of course, the news that newly-minted Vice President JD Vance would address the assembled throng at the rally on the mall which was to precede the March.

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The VP did speak, as did many other high-profile politico bigwigs, including House majority speaker Mike Johnson, and Florida governor Ron Desantis, yet for my money they were all outshone by a young Wheaton college student named Hannah Lape, who gave a stirring and eloquent address that packed great truths into a very short speech, concluding with this astounding peroration:

“Our confidence in the sanctity of all human life from conception runs deeper than ‘civic responsibility’… It is a timeless Gospel truth. We have the assurance that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Risen King who sits in glory at the right hand of the Father is the same humble servant who took on flesh in Mary’s womb. He was fully God and fully zygote, fully embryo, fully fetus, fully infant, fully child, and fully man, and so we celebrate today that every preborn child is knit together in the image of God, and we ask our nation to defend their Constitutional right to life, not just for those who are healthy, wealthy, wanted, convenient, or respected, but for EVERY CHILD. Tens of thousands strong, we are a voice for life, and we will speak until Heaven meets earth, when death shall be no more!”

After hearing the speakers on the Mall, we marched. Given that the cause was quite literally serious as murder, the March itself seemed at times a curiously lighthearted affair. The crowd was spirited, lively, somewhat mischievous, but generally guileless; they skewed heavily towards youth, with many groups of devout high school and college students participating in the event. These “kids” would as soon break into school chants with a pro-life message as sing hymns. At one time, someone on the sidewalk playing a guitar led passerby in a round of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Some clergy were present— a few even stood on platforms in the path of the march— but laymen were most prominently seen. How many marchers were Catholic? There was no way to tell for sure, but Catholic iconography was certainly quite conspicuous. A pair of men bore a statue of Mary aloft, and carried her over the entire distance of the March, while one posted platform along the way bore the statement “America Needs Fatima,” a reference to the child seers of Fatima, Spain who allegedly spoke to the Blessed Virgin, and the miracles which were reported to have followed. One mini-marching band contingent played “Immaculate Mary,” and many marchers carried rosary beads.

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Had I been a liberal or a feminist going undercover at this event, I would have been surprised by the number of women present, since the mainstream media constantly speaks of legalized abortion as a “woman’s issue,” and assumes that women motivated to vote on the issue of abortion must, ipso facto, be “pro-choice” in orientation. I would likewise have been shocked, and perhaps dismayed (were I an undercover feminist), by the unrelenting youthfulness of the marchers, since we’re generally told that the only real pro-lifers are either old men eager to control women’s bodies and perpetuate the patriarchy, and “Church Lady”/ “Serina Joy”-esque mean girl types, certainly not the friendly, fresh-faced youth of both sexes who made up the bulk of those in attendance.

(A sidenote: There does seem to be a certain “Catholic chic” these days, especially amongst conservatives, with high-profile converts much in evidence, including vice-president JD Vance himself. What one is to make of this trend is a subject which deserves an article all of its own; here I merely remark it as an undeniable aspect of contemporary politics and culture.)

My overall reflections on the March for Life are overwhelmingly positive. The overall atmosphere of optimism and pervasive goodwill warmed my typically cynical heart and gladdened by usually pessimistic temperament. One thing that astounds me is that we barely encountered any counter-protesters. There was only one oddball, standing mutely in the street and holding a handmade sign on which was scrawled something about how “Sherman didn’t burn and pillage enough,” perhaps meant as an oblique diss of the Bible-belt South?

Other than this singular purveyor of cryptic Civil War-themed gibberish, no disgruntled or angry dissenters from the pro-life were present anywhere on the streets of downtown DC. I am at a loss to account for this. Perhaps demoralization is so pronounced in these first days of Trump-47 (and his indefatigueable recourse to executive orders) as to cause abortion advocates to sulk in their homes instead of coming out to belch their biliously blasphemous venom from the sidelines, as they have so often in the past.

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There are only two critiques, such as they are, that I have concerning the event, both of which relate to the pre-March rally. All of the speakers were Republicans— understandable since the Democrat party has essentially banished all of its former pro-life representatives to the outer darkness— and many of them indulged in a degree of partisan banter during the speaking portion of the event. At times, the gathering took on the auspices of a political rally. I felt this was inappropriate, and cheapened the atmosphere. Even if abortion has become a “political football,” it is at heart a moral matter— one of utmost and fundamental seriousness— not a political one.

My other critique is less serious, but still worth expressing. Although the large majority of participants were religiously-affiliated— nearly all Christian, with Catholics probably most prominent, but some Orthodox and Protestants significantly present as well—- abortion is not, I believe, a “religious” issue. That is to say, one needn’t hold to any religious creed to apprehend the evil of killing the unborn. Anyone with a well-formed conscience, including atheists and agnostics, can apprehend the moral horror of abortion. It is, dare I say, self-evident, if one actually examines it for what it is, instead of being disingenuously flippant.

It’s not that I wish the March were “less” religious, but I’d like to see more evidence of a broad consensus encompassing the faithful, the faithless, and everyone in between concerning the radical wrongness of what is sometimes anodynely called “terminating a pregnancy.” Any such procedure amounts to the conscious and deliberate taking of an innocent and helpless human life, which to be sure is a termination with “extreme prejudice.”

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.