WASHINGTON — In below-freezing temperatures, thousands of pro-life activists trudged through slush from the White House to the Supreme Court in the 32nd-annual March for Life Jan. 24. With bleachers from the inaugural parade still lining the route, pro-lifers expressed qualified optimism about their cause heading into a second term of President George W. Bush.

It was Bush himself, in a telephone call from Camp David to organizer Nellie Gray and the assembled marchers, who sounded the underlying sentiment of the day. “The America of our dreams, where every child is welcomed in life and protected in law, may still be some ways away,” Bush said, “but even from the far side of the river, Nellie, we can see its glimmerings. … A true culture of life cannot be sustained solely by changing laws. We need, most of all, to change hearts.”

Whom Bush nominates for the Supreme Court, and whether Senate Republicans break the pattern of Democratic filibusters, were the central questions among marchers looking ahead to the next four years. As marchers chanted “Hey, hey; ho, ho; Roe v. Wade has got to go” in front of the court, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, told the Register, “I am very confident the president is going to nominate very pro-life justices.”

He based that confidence on the profiles of Bush’s nominees to date for the lower courts. Other marchers, however, expressed mixed expectations about what sort of judges Bush would name and the Senate could confirm. One factor in this fear was Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a supporter of Roe.

But even marchers who were skeptical about pro-life gains in Washington were upbeat about the cause as a whole.

 Father Joseph McCaffrey is the pastor of Saints John & Paul Parish in Sewickley, Pa., which carried the lead banner in the march. Father McCaffrey said, “We feel that changing hearts and minds is beginning to happen, and laws will follow.”

Acknowledging that a pro-life judge is not a shoo-in with the current White House and Senate, Father McCaffrey said, “We have the best chance we’ve had in years” for moving the high court to the right.

Stephen Braunlich, newly elected president of American Collegians for Life, said “the view among pro-life college students is that Bush will do the right things” regarding nominations, regulations and legislation.

“Politically, Bush understands that that’s what he has to do,” Braunlich said.

In the days after the march, Bush announced his support for the Child Custody Protection Act and the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. The first would require states to honor parental-involvement laws of other states by preventing anyone other than a teen-ager’s parents or legal guardians from taking her to another state for an abortion. The second would require abortion practitioners to tell women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant and considering abortion that the procedure will cause significant pain for the child.

As always, young people made up the bulk of the march. Marchers took this as a positive sign of the cultural shift. “The younger you are, the more pro-life you are,” Braunlich said.

J.T. Flynn, a graduate student at Franciscan University at Steubenville, in Ohio, agreed. At the Capitol Hill Irish pub The Dubliner, on the Saturday night before the march, Flynn and his schoolmates wore T-shirts proclaiming “PRO-LIFE” in large letters. Flynn said the culture was slowly moving in a pro-life direction, in large part because of science, through ultrasound and other medical advances that move viability earlier in pregnancy.

Republican ‘Hostages’

Like Braunlich, though, Flynn expressed frustration with the political establishment and pessimism about the near-term prospects for the pro-life movement. “Everyone in that march is a hostage to the Republican Party, including me,” he said. “Some of them know it. Some don’t.”

Bob and Peg Hensler of Collings-wood, N.J., were generally positive about national abortion politics, but were less confident when it comes to the Garden State, where the government is aggressively promoting human cloning. “I see no signs of improvement right now,” Bob Hensler said about his state.

Leanne Libert, a  pro-abortion D.C. resident, stood in front of marchers at the Court holding a National Organization for Women sign. She said Bush’s nominees may not overturn Roe, but they would hurt the abortion cause in other ways. “We’re concerned [about the next four years]. George Bush’s judicial appointments in the past have been anti-woman.”

Libert did not share the pro-lifers’ view that the culture is moving away from accepting abortion. “After George Bush was elected, we saw a surge in (National Organization for Women) membership. We’re not worried about our numbers decreasing.”

Marchers displayed their typical mix of signs, including the ubiquitous “Defend Life” signs printed by the Knights of Columbus. Feminists for Life distributed “Women Deserve Better” posters, while “We Shall Overcome … Abortion” signs were also prominent.

Some of the signs expressed less hope and more indignation; there were large pictures of aborted fetuses and sweatshirts proclaiming “Abortion is Homicide.” A popular shirt for young pro-lifers read, “1/3 forever silenced,” referring to the portion of the younger generation lost to abortion.

Veteran marchers agreed that the general tone of the march, though dampened by the weather, was not much different from in the past.

The Vigil for Life, held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the evening of Jan. 23, saw the same overflow crowd as last year. The Mass was, at its core, hopeful, with Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore pointing to the 2004 elections as a sign that Americans have rejected liberal social values. The cardinal is chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

“The evil must end. It must end soon. And we are here to affirm that, with God’s grace, we must be instruments of its ending,” the cardinal said of Roe v. Wade. “The legal protections of our unborn sisters and brothers must be restored.”

Timothy P. Carney writes

from Washington, D.C.