The theme for the March for Life 2025 that will take place on January 24 is a simple affirming statement, “Life: Why We March”. While this statement may seem an obvious assertion (the people who participate in the March for Life each year in Washington, D.C. are Pro-Life!), it is so important to renew the reason we march because it is so greatly misunderstood. Let’s think about it.
Some may accuse Pro-Lifers of participation in the March for Life because they are anti-woman. Nothing could be further from the truth! There are more women than men who are involved in the Pro-Life movement. While there is a pretty even split between men and women Pro-Lifers, just go to any Planned Parenthood building or any facility that provides abortions and you will find more women praying or providing information about alternatives to abortion. Of course, you will find stalwart and faithful men involved in Pro-Life activities in significant numbers. However, women tend to be the heads of Pro-Life on the national level.
There are those who will say that people in the pro-Life movement care only about the unborn child and not the mother. That is absolutely false. There is a great emphasis on the provision for and the protection of both mother and unborn child. Programs like Walking with Moms in Need in Catholic parishes and other Pro-Life agencies seek to support women in crisis pregnancies in every way. Pro-Lifers recognize the intimate union between the mother and the child. Love and care for one is love and care for the other. Those who do not admit the intimate union between a mother and her unborn child are the people who oppose the welfare of the mother to the welfare of her child. It is illogical and unreasonable to think that we can help the life of the mother by encouraging her to destroy the life of the child with whom she has a precious and unbreakable bond.
Sometimes people who are pro-abortion accuse the Pro-Life movement of being archaic and not “following the science”. They claim that abortion is simply removing a clump of cells that are essentially a parasite feeding off the woman’s body. The truth is that the science tells us that from the first moment of conception the child in the mother’s womb is a completely new and genetically distinct person. This beautiful child is not a organ to be removed from the mother’s body like an appendix or a tumor that would cease to be living if removed. Rather, this tiny and distinct person, while dependent on the mother for nine months to receive nourishment, fluids, and oxygen, has the potential to emerge from the mother’s womb and live as a separate and developed human being.
Pro-abortionists claim that Pro-Lifers want to take away rights and health for women. In fact, the Pro-Life movement holds the deep desire that all people have health care, including women and their unborn children. Those in the Pro-Life movement fight to ensure that all human rights be extended to all people, both to those who are born and those who are unborn. The primary right is the right to live. If a person does not have that right, no other right can be enjoyed. Human rights do not just extend to that who are larger and already born persons. These same rights belong also to small, defenseless, often nameless, and unborn persons.
Life: Why We March. It says it all. Does it not? No matter what the rhetoric may be coming from the pro-abortion side, the reason that we participate in the March for Life in Washington in January, or are at the Pennsylvania March for Life in Harrisburg in the Fall, or go to Planned Parenthood to pray and counsel, or provide for mothers in crisis pregnancies, or pray countless rosaries for the protection of unborn children and all human life. We do it all for LIFE, that tremendous gift from God that is not disposable. We do it all for LOVE. God has loved us into existence and we are called to love Him in return and to love one another as Jesus Christ taught us by offering Himself on the Cross.
We march, we pray, we embrace all, we care for the unborn child and the mother, we lay down our life in sacrifice. We do it all for one reason. We do it for LOVE. We read in St. John’s Gospel. “Greater love has no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends”. (Jn 15:12) and “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:16) All for love!
Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh