Editor’s Note: This interview with March for Life President Jennie Bradley Lichter about the upcoming 2026 march in Washington D.C. aired on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly on Jan. 21, 2026 with host Abi Galván. This transcript, edited for length and clarity, is reprinted here with permission.

Jennie, you assumed the role of president of March for Life in February of 2025. You have almost a full year under your belt. What has the experience been like?

It has been such a great year. It’s been a year full of blessings. It’s been really exciting. And I just continue to be so blown away by the opportunity to lead this organization that has meant so much to me since I was a teenager.

Every time I get out to a state march, it just really fills my cup. On a personal level, I love those events so much. And from the March for Life perspective, they’re at the heart of what we do. They’re full of young people, the future of the movement. My own kids have been traveling with me to some of the state marches, which has been really special. And just seeing the grassroots pro-life movement gathered in their home communities is incredibly powerful. So that’s been really special this year. It’s been so special that everywhere I go, truly everywhere I go, people seek me out and chase me down to tell me their March for Life story. And that was something I had not anticipated, just what it means that I now get to be the repository of everyone’s memories about the march.

But it is incredible how, all over this country and all over town here in D.C., people have stories about how the march has impacted them, has formed them, has shaped them, has made them a more committed pro-lifer. People tell me about meeting their spouses at the March for Life or discovering their vocations at the march. It’s incredible just to really be fully immersed in how this event has changed people and changed the country over time.

That’s incredible. Now, you touched on the state marches and the national march. I think something people have been asking is, when Nellie [Gray] started the March for Life, she was marching so that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, and that was overturned with the Dobbs decision: Why is it still important that we march for life right here in our nation’s capital?

That’s right. It is still important. I’m going to tell you a quick story about Nellie, and then we’ll talk about why we keep marching. Nellie Gray, God bless her, the founder of the March for Life — and led the march until her death, so she led the march for decades — Nellie, of course, was working to overturn of Roe, and Roe v. Wade was ultimately overturned on the eve of her birthday. So we always think about that. Every year we think of Nellie and just thank God for her persistence, especially around the time of the Dobbs decision. But it’s just such a perfect example of how the Lord has got this. [Abi: Amen.] Nellie herself didn’t live to see the moment on Earth that she worked for for so many decades. But I know that she was rejoicing in heaven. And what a birthday present from the Lord to this incredible woman. So God bless Nellie Gray and what she gave us.

Now, Nellie, you’re right, initially founded the march to take down Roe v. Wade. But 50-plus years later, it’s very clear that we still have a lot of work to do, right?

Taking down the Roe regime of abortion on demand across the country was incredibly important. But there are still way too many abortions happening in this country. So that’s the No. 1 reason why we’re still marching. But more than that, Abi — and again, I understand this more than ever before after this year that I’ve had — the March for Life in Washington, I think, accomplishes three really important things for the movement that cannot be accomplished any other way with this degree of movement-wide and nationwide impact. And that’s, first, forming young people for pro-life mission. The march is bursting at the seams with teenagers, and with college students, and people in their 20s, like me when I first came as an 18-year-old. That is an incredibly formative time in the lives of young people, and it is exactly the right moment to put them in the middle of an enormous, electrified crowd marching on behalf of life and just letting them see that this is a cause worth really throwing yourself into — and that when you do, you’re surrounded by so many other people who feel the same way. So the March for Life, first of all, forms young people.

Second of all, for those of us who are pro-life veterans, maybe have been in the movement for a long time and been marching for many years, being at the march is also a really important moment of refreshment and being reenergized. And a lot of people have shared that with me this year. Like I said, they’ll say, “I come to the march, and it keeps me going for the whole year. I bottle it up and I take it home with me as I volunteer at my local PRC [pregnancy-resource center] or as I work with moms in my church community.” It’s that moment of that electrifying crowd that really keeps people going in the movement.

And third, of course, the public-witness impact of having this many people gathered in the heart of our nation’s capital. When you stand at the March for Life, you have the Capitol dome behind the stage and then the Washington Monument behind the marchers. You are right in the heart of the most powerful and important city in the world. And the city shuts down every year on the day of the March for Life. And we have to remember, of course, the persistence that it takes to come to D.C. in January, in particular, especially because it always seems to be the worst day of the year, weather-wise, the day of the March for Life, right?

The Lord gives us a chance to show the nation what we’re made of, year after year. It’s so powerful. So that public witness that Nellie was initially trying to harness, of witnessing to our legislators, both at the federal level and at the state level, as they are considered pro-life laws and policies, and to our cultural elites, our media elites, everyone who wants to say that this issue is over, it’s just not true. And the March for Life is the physical embodiment of the pro-life movement’s persistence and determination and its youthfulness. Again, the future of the March for Life and the pro-life movement are arrayed on the National Mall every year.

I love that you mentioned that because it’s true. Actually, the way I got involved in the pro-life movement was also when I was an undergrad, and that’s the first time I ever went to the national March for Life. We had our own Texas March for Life, which was great in the summer. But it really does make an impact because you see just how broad it is. Dobbs returned the decision back to the states, and the March for Life was very agile, and you launched your state march program. Tell us more about that.

That’s right. So the state-march program has been just growing by leaps and bounds in the last few years. In 2025, we marched in 19 states across the country. This year, we currently have 21 lined up, and I’m sure by the end of the year, we’ll have added more because what we’ve seen is that states just continuously are reaching out saying, “We want to march for life here in our state capital.” Our marches are in red states and blue states. They’re truly from coast-to-coast. Every one of them has a little bit of a different flavor. It’s been interesting to see. In some places, there’s more of a seminarian-and-clergy presence. In some places, you can tell it’s a lot of families with young kids. Many of them are really bursting with high-school and college groups. But there are a handful in particular where, in Colorado, for example — not a friendly place for the cause of life — eight different high schools collaborated to lead the march, and they just brought so much energy. And it’s very sweet at these marches, the way the students and the Catholic high-school students in particular engage.

They oscillate between, for example, I’m thinking Pennsylvania now, singing the Salve Regina as they march, singing funny pro-life chants that I’m guessing are their school’s probably fight song, and they’re inserting “baby” and “life” and things like that, right, the way high-school students do. And then this fall, in particular, chanting about Charlie Kirk and what he meant to them. ... Catholic songs and hyms are often part of the branding. And then again, just like, chanting and singing and shouting on behalf of life. And it’s incredibly beautiful. And their presence lights up everyone else at the event, too.

So our program is really, I think, at the heart of the grassroots pro-life movement. And I have been trying to prioritize, and will continue to prioritize, getting to as many as I can. I couldn’t go to 19 last year, and I will not go to 21 this coming year, but I will be crisscrossing the country at state marches, with my kids with me in many cases, just fully immersing our organization in the local pro-life communities and what they’re doing to protect life, both at their statehouses and through the work of the local pregnancy centers and other things the pro-life movement does.

Are there any states we should be paying particular attention to?

Yes. What are typically thought of as the key swing states from a political perspective also tend to be places where our marches are the biggest and the most energized. We actually saw attendance records at several of our fall marches this year in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan. Those continue to really be bellweather states and places where the pro-life movement is so energized and activated, and again, really, really young. And that’s incredibly special — and I think is an encouragement, just for all of us to keep in mind as we head again into an election year and an election cycle, just to remember that pro-life voters are very vocal and they’re very present in all of these key states across the country.

The midterm elections are coming up. Do you anticipate that affecting any of your work at the March for Life?

Not directly, in the sense that our work at the march, our particular charism in the pro-life movement — which, like the body of Christ, has a lot of different elements, all who have different roles — is the power of collective public witness, first and foremost, and the culture change, as well as, yes, the political change that can come through that. So our work continues no matter what happens in any given presidential or midterm election. And I feel really blessed by being able to have, through our work at the march, that tunnel vision, that laser focus on giving the movement opportunities to come together, again, both for the health of the movement itself and for the moment of public witness that you can’t get any other way. So our focus on the national march and the state marches for life and growing the state march program will continue no matter what happens on the ballot this fall. I can’t believe it’s this fall already, but this fall in the midterm elections. More broadly, of course, especially here inside the Beltway, where all we talk about is politics, it feels like sometimes there are folks who are suggesting that abortion might be a losing issue in the midterms and that maybe folks shouldn’t be talking about it so much.

I think that’s completely wrong. That’s wrong. It misreads the electorate. It misunderstands what we’ve seen in the last few years. There’s no data, no examples to support the idea that pro-life politicians have been losing elections since Dobbs. They just haven’t been. And there are a lot of counterexamples, of course, of really strong pro-life politicians who have put life at the center of their work, who have continued to in reelection. Gov. Ron DeSantis is Exhibit A, who at the same time that he was fully leaning in in Florida to fighting against their bad ballot initiative on abortion, won reelection, right? Resoundingly. And many other examples among governors, among senators. So I think, again, it’s wrong on the merits to think that we should sweep abortion under the rug. We could never do that with the preeminent issue of our time. But it’s also just wrong as a matter of the politics. And I think that as this year continues in the pro-life movement and pro-life voters continue to make their voices heard, I think that will become really clear. And I hope and believe that we will see pro-life politicians fully embrace their strong records on this issue, which, again, are consistent with what the majority of Americans want to see.

Amen. Now, what is the March for Life looking forward to in 2026?

Well, first of all, we’re going to have a great march coming up this Friday. We’re very, very excited for the national March for Life and happy to talk about that more in a minute, if you would like. We do have our 21 state marches on the horizon. I am excited to get back on the road for those. And we are really excited, too, to keep just thinking about how we can use our platform and, again, our particular charism in the ecosystem of the movement to lift up the work of pregnancy-resource centers in particular and maternity homes and what they have been doing to help moms. The team and I were really excited to find some new ways to highlight their work this past year, including my own visits to PRCs across the country, which I have prioritized everywhere I’ve traveled for the march, visiting a PRC and then being able to tell their story through our communications platforms. We’ve been able to do some really neat things in partnership with EveryLife, the pro-life diaper company, who has started shipping diapers to everywhere. I’m going to visit a PRC so that I can be the Santa Claus of diapers and bring diapers.

That’s amazing.

PRCs are all saying, “You can never have enough diapers when you’re in the business of supporting pregnant moms.” No, you can’t. You can never have enough diapers. So we’re thrilled to be able to do things like that. And that’s going to be one of our priorities in 2026 also, just to really continue to help tell the story of all of the good work that’s being done across the country to support moms.

You mentioned that you started marching at the March for Life when you were a teenager, then as a board member of the March for Life, and now you’ll be marching as the president. What has that trajectory been like for you?

It’s been so much fun. And again, the march has been just at the center of my [pro-life witness]. ... It’s on my calendar every January, like so many people. So it’s been a part of my life for a long time, starting when I was a freshman in college and rode a bus through the night to Washington with my friends. That was only the second time I had ever been to D.C. And I think for many of the young marchers, that’s probably the case. It’s either their first time or one of their first times seeing our nation’s capital. So it really felt so electrifying for my friends and for me to be standing again in the shadow of these incredible D.C. landmarks, marching for life surrounded by so many other people. And then I’ve marched with my kids over the years, and I think back to the years that they were in a carrier on my chest or in a stroller, and then they graduate to being on my husband’s shoulders. And then, finally, they could march on their own, holding their own signs, which has been really beautiful as well. And then last year, they were on stage with me when I was introduced as the next president, and they will be again this year, which is really neat.

But I’d also love to just take a minute to tell you about a year that I wasn’t able to march. That was so formative for me, too. And I suspect it maybe will resonate, especially with some of the moms who are able to watch your program. The year that my oldest child was born — he’s a winter baby and was born in the winter of 2013, 2014, which was a particularly cold winter here in Washington — I couldn't march that year. He was 2 months old on the day of the March for Life. He had been sick a lot that winter. And I knew that it would just be irresponsible to take him out in the cold and take him down to the mall. So what I did instead that day, when my husband was at work, is just I sat holding my baby, my firstborn child, and just prayed through that whole afternoon, knowing that the march was going on at the time, just holding my baby and just praying and crying, honestly, for all of the women who were choosing abortion that day, for all of the moms who had let the culture or their partners, or their parents, or anyone else in their lives get between them and their babies, right?

Which really, after becoming a mom myself, just felt so deeply personal and so profoundly tragic to me, even more so than it ever had before. And that moment in that day was something I thought back to quite a bit when I was discerning about joining the March for Life, right? And just, again, wanting to make sure that moms aren’t ever put in the position to have a wedge driven between themselves and their babies. So the team and I pray, my team and I pray, every time we pray together, for mothers who are finding out about an unplanned pregnancy on that day, any mother who’s contemplating abortion on that day. I think that’s really important. And again, I just know that there [are] so, so many other women out there who maybe can’t be marching because they’re taking care of a sick child or they can’t travel but whose hearts are with other mothers and are really joined in prayer to other moms. And I think that’s incredibly important, too. It’s really great to come to the march when you can, but holding other moms in prayer and other women in prayer is one of the most important things we can do.

Amen, Jennie. Thank you for sharing that really beautiful story. I got chills listening to it, and, actually, I’ll be offering up our broadcast that day for that very special intention. So thank you for sharing it. Do you have any sneak peeks or previews you can share with us about the march?

Sure. So our theme this year is “Life Is a Gift,” and we’re so excited about that theme. We’re thinking of it as a heart theme. When we think about how you really change people, of course, in the pro-life movement, we need to have our arguments at the ready. And I’m a former lawyer and a philosophy major. I really believe in the power of strong arguments, right? We have great data on our side, and we need to be ready to make those arguments.

But human nature being what it is, change often starts in the heart, right? How religious conversion often begins and how conversion to the pro-life cause, we really believe, often begins. So we’re hoping this year to soften the hearts of people who come in contact with the march through just really focusing on the beautiful gift of human life, right? Which I do believe everyone knows in their heart of hearts is beautiful, and is good, and true, and really is a gift. So we’re hoping to cut through the noise, set politics and division aside, and just have a great day together celebrating the gift of life that Our Lord has given us.

So that’s the overarching theme. Our other goal is to make the program a little bit more compact, just knowing that it’s a very cold day in January, and it is tough to stand out on the mall for a very long time and then go on and march after that. So we’re trying to deliver a power-packed, really inspiring program with a lot of momentum in a slightly smaller package than in the past. And so to do that, we are really trying to infuse every single beat of our program with meaning. So this year, our national anthem, for example, will be sung by a beautiful choir of young adults with Down syndrome who really embody the message that life is a gift and who are great musicians. So we’re so excited to have them with us. Our pledge of allegiance will be led by a mom who chose life. So again, every opportunity we’re trying to take to tell the story of the pro-life movement. Our testimony speakers will be the two sides of the pro-life coin, which, of course, is supporting moms and then shining a light on the horrors of abortion. So we have a mom who saved her baby’s life through the abortion-pill-reversal protocol after beginning a chemical abortion under great pressure from her boyfriend.

And then we have a PRC director who will talk about what her PRC has done, especially through mobile ultrasound, where they have saved thousands of babies by parking their mobile units outside of Planned Parenthoods in their state and inviting women to just come in and see their baby on ultrasound before they make a decision. And that, it turns out, is really powerful because, again, life is such a gift. And once a woman sees her baby and hears that heartbeat, she very often changes her mind. So we’re excited about all of those program elements and then some other special, exciting things we’ll be able to announce later on.

Well, it sounds like we have a lot to look forward to.

That’s right.

And that it’ll be packing a punch.

Absolutely.

So before we let you go, Jennie — thank you so much for being with us — why do you march for life?

To me, in some ways, it’s very simple. Abortion is wrong, full stop. It’s never permissible to take the life of an innocent human being, especially a baby. And I believe that as an article of faith and also an article of the natural law. And where you see a wrong, you should try and right it, right? So that’s why I march.

Well, Jennie, thank you so much for being with us today. It is always a pleasure to have you. And please know that we’ll be praying for you throughout these days as you get ready for the march.

Thank you for your prayers, and thanks for having me.