Feature

The pro-life movement should work to change hearts and minds on the issue of abortion by demonstrating “radical solidarity” with women and unborn children, some of the movement’s thought leaders said at a Jan. 19 panel in the nation’s capital.

Tens of thousands of pro-life advocates descended upon the nation’s capital for the 50th March for Life Jan. 20 — the first national march since the overturn of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that initially prompted the annual demonstration.

Sponsored by the Sisters of Life and the Knights of Columbus, the morning gathering drew some 4,200 people — most of them teens and young adults — for a program of prayer, worship music, and personal testimonies that concluded with Eucharistic adoration and Mass.

The pro-life movement has “much to celebrate” because Roe v. Wade “is no more,” said Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va., in his homily Jan. 19 for the National Prayer Vigil for Life’s opening Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

This year for the first time the Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco takes place “in a country where the so-called right to kill an unborn child is no longer the law of the land,” Eva Muntean, co-chair of the walk, told OSV News.