The day before the American March for Life, sixteen pro-life activists sat in the street in front of the Department of Health and Human Services, blasting a homemade protest song with a raspy refrain into a megaphone: “Ban the abortion pill! Ban the abortion pill!” A phalanx of Washington, D.C., police officers surrounded them, warning them to move themselves off the road and out of traffic. Other activists waved signs from the sidewalk; one featured Trump’s face and the slogan “Baby Killer.”
The motley crew of pro-lifers from a range of different groups included strange bedfellows such as Operation Rescue founder and pro-life veteran Randall Terry and members of the leftist group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. The event, promoted via press release the day before, emphasized their displeasure with the Trump HHS Department’s approval of a generic new abortion pill in October.
The arrests were routine. Terry and his PAAU allies specialize in this sort of performative protest; everything had been arranged with the police ahead of time. Terry gave a blistering speech about the necessity of creating “social tension” to end abortion, but it was perhaps the most frictionless act of civil disobedience in the history of American protest—although it looked dramatic on the social media livestreams. Terry and Terrisa Bukovinac of PAUU, however, would confront Vice President JD Vance directly the following day.
What made the event significant was the fact that Marjorie Dannenfelser showed up to make a statement. Dannenfelser is the president of SBA Pro-Life America, the most powerful political pro-life group in the capital, and her presence at an event billed as a civil disobedience protest of the Trump administration emphasizes the movement’s frustration with the president. On January 6, Trump urged the GOP conference to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. It has been in place since 1976 and saved some 2.6 million lives.
Dannenfelser took the megaphone mic and gave a five-minute speech addressing President Trump directly, calling for the restoration of the policy of his first administration, when access to abortion drugs required an in-person doctor visit. The Biden administration used COVID as a pretext to eliminate this standard, creating a massive mail-order market that has sent abortion pills flowing into states with pro-life laws. Abortion drugs, she noted, now take more lives than fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin combined.
“Restore the in-person dispensing by a doctor of these drugs!” Dannenfelser told the small gathering. “What a modest thing to do for the women and children of America. Restore that to the Trump 1 policy! The Biden COVID-era abortion drug policy has led to devastating moments of death for children and coercion and death for women … We are united in the pro-life movement, and this is what we expect to see. Abortions have gone up since Dobbs, not down!”
The growing rift between movement leaders and the president—which was muted after Trump personally intervened to remove the pro-life plank from the GOP platform at the 2024 Milwaukee convention—has surged to the surface in recent weeks. On January 21, Dannenfelser made it clear in a scathing Washington Postop-ed that the GOP risks losing the pro-life vote, and she has indicated SBA Pro-Life America, which has knocked millions of doors for GOP candidates, might sit out the crucial midterm elections if the administration continues their pattern of betrayals.
The faultlines are not only between the movement and the administration. At the boisterous Life or Death Con put on by the White Rose Resistance at Union Station later that day, some speakers—including former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson and talk show host Steve Deace—took aim at some of America’s largest pro-life groups for opposing “equal protection” laws that include criminal consequences for women who have abortions. Some pro-life leaders fear that pushing for such bills will trigger a deep public backlash in an already tough political environment.
The debate is, in part, a function of post-Roe chaos in the movement. For decades, the political arm of the pro-life movement was laser-focused on overturning Roe v. Wade. With the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, abortion laws were returned to the state level, where abortion activists secured a string of referendum victories fueled by massive war chests and a steady stream of scaremongering media propaganda pounding home the message that without legal abortion, women will die. Trump, believing abortion to be a political liability, began backing away. Pro-life groups disagree on the way forward.
On January 23, the conservative think tank Advancing American Freedom hosted a packed March for Life Open House. AAF was founded by Mike Pence in 2021 to advance conservative values, and the former vice president and his wife Karen mingled with young pro-life activists, shaking hands, taking photos, offering encouragement. It has become clear over the past year that Pence was, as AAF President Tim Chapman put it in his remarks to the gathering, “the pro-life movement’s man in the White House.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, who offered a few heartfelt remarks after Congressmen Jefferson Shreve and Bill Huizenga, concurred. “I’m really looking forward to hearing what you have to say, Mr. Vice President, because this is home,” she said to applause. “It really is home. Wherever you’re gathering, it will be home, because there has been no one else more influential in my own leadership than Vice President Pence.” Pence, she said, had led on the pro-life issue from his office. He was the “moral compass” of the first Trump administration. It is clear that she misses him.
Pence reminded everyone that Roe v. Wade has now been consigned “to the ash heap of history,” but that this is the end of the beginning, and much work remains to be done. “The truth is we are facing new headwinds in this movement despite all of our progress … even in the ranks of those who once claimed the pro-life banner,” he said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as “a pro-abortion director of Health and Human Services.” Trump called for flexibility on Hyde “after generations of success on the Hyde amendment.” The administration has thus far declined to act on the abortion pill.
The former vice president closed with a clarion call from Scripture. “The Bible says don’t grow weary in doing well, because in due time, you will reap a harvest if you don’t give up,” he said. Karen Pence offered a prayer on behalf of the gathering, and the attendees headed out to the March for Life rally on the National Mall.
The March for Life is the largest annual anti-abortion event in the world, and more than a hundred thousand people poured into the capital. The streets were a sea of toques and signs, and cheers reverberated from the marble façades of federal buildings. Many signs featured the late Charlie Kirk with one of his signature lines: “Get Married and Have Kids. You Won’t Regret It.” Banners were hoisted across the crowds with slogans such as “Life Is Our Revolution!”, “Death Is Not Welcome Here!” and, more somberly, “God is Not Mocked.” I counted five sniper positions set up on the rooftops in anticipation of the vice president’s speech.
