National pro-life leaders gathering Friday for the 45th annual March for Life in the nation’s capital are praising President Donald Trump and his administration for being “100 percent true” to his campaign promises.
The March, which draws over 100,000 Americans from across the country to Washington, DC, will this year see Trump become the first sitting president of the United States to address the March live via satellite from the White House.
President of the March for Life organization Jeanne Mancini reflected to Breitbart News on the first year of the Trump presidency and her assessment of his impact on the pro-life movement:
There was some excitement about Trump this time last year, but also some anxiety about whether he would be true to what he promised on the campaign trail. And, he has been 100 percent true, and it’s been exciting to see the pro-life leanings of this administration, whether it’s at the top levels of personnel policy – putting intellectual, experienced, scholarly, pro-life Americans at the highest level of government, including Vice President Pence, of course, or the actual policies that have been enacted.
In an op-ed column at the New York Post, Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser writes the hopes of the pro-life movement have been “well-founded.”
“Over the last year President Trump has worked diligently to fulfill his commitments,” she notes, observing the four promises Trump made to the pro-life organizations while still on the campaign trail in 2016:
- Nominating pro-life justices to the US Supreme Court;
- Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women;
- Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions; and
- Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.
Both Mancini and Dannenfelser agree that, while Trump is doing his part to get the country out of the abortion business, Congress needs to strengthen its resolve, since Republicans – supposedly the pro-life party – now lead both chambers and hold the White House.
“I’m frustrated by the Senate,” Mancini told Breitbart News, observing that while the president nominated now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, he “could make good on the three others [promises] if the Senate were to stop putting up barriers in the way.”
“The Pain-Capable bill is a no-brainer, and we’re hoping the Senate will pass that, though it’s more of an optimistic hope at this stage, and yet eight out of ten Americans would get rid of late-term abortion,” she explains. “Most Americans – even if they say they are pro-choice – think that abortion should be limited to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy.”
“Also, the codification of the Hyde Amendment in the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act should be able to pass the Senate,” Mancini adds. “The president has promised he would sign both of those measures into law.”
A newly released Marist poll finds that 76 percent of Americans favor restricting abortion to – at most – the first three months of pregnancy, and 60 percent oppose the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.
Dannenfelser points out that Planned Parenthood is now under investigation by Trump’s Department of Justice following allegations of profiteering from the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.
“Under Obama, we could only dream of this,” she says, adding:
Finally, under Trump we are closer than ever to ending cruel late-term abortions. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act has passed the House of Representatives and the steeper climb will be in the Senate, but we fight on knowing Trump fully supports the bill and will sign it without hesitation should Congress send it to his desk.
“Trump’s first year has been one of monumental successes, and we’d gladly rally the pro-life grassroots to support him all over again,” Dannenfelser concludes.
The March for Life is held each year on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade, when the high court created a right to abortion though none existed in the Constitution.
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