The annual pro-life march in Washington, D.C., has become a fixture in our national life. Three-and-a-half years after the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case, it is more evident than ever that there is a need for a national expression of revulsion at the toll taken by abortion on demand. Despite the pleas of some political leaders, including President Trump, that sanctity of life issues return to their presumed status as matters for the states, life is a transcendent subject of concern to the whole country. Both sides in the debate at the 2026 March offered definitive proof.

In civic life, no issue can be said to exist if discussion and action about it are sporadic and peripheral. Dissatisfying as some of the speeches and remarks on this occasion were, the fact is that the 2026 March in Washington was not merely an occasion for speech but a mandate for deeds. The national media routinely underreport the youthful crowds that peacefully populate the Mall, but elected and administration officials know of their presence and of the demand they address the next generation with actions that match their rhetoric. They dare not come to the podium empty-handed. For this reason alone, there will be a national March for Life in 2027 and for many decades to come.

The real reason, of course, is not mere politics. The very fact that the speeches generally convey a national and international — even “civilizational” — significance is intrinsic to the subject. The topic is not tax rates or regulation of the internet — the topic is who counts as human and what is the duty of government at all levels to render an expansive judgment on the question of who is one of us. The speeches delivered on January 23 and 24 at March-related events gave broadly affirmative answers to that question and to the stakes in the debate over the right to life. The language itself answered the question, “Does the human right to life matter in Albany and Topeka and Jackson, but not in Washington, D.C.?” Can you be regarded as a human being in Tennessee but disposed as refuse in Sacramento?

Speaking to massive crowds on the Mall, this is the question leaders cannot avoid as they talk about prudence and increments. Those virtues are relevant, but they do not define reality. One million lives taken each year in the wealthiest nation ever to exist cannot be a satisfactory outcome, and none of the key speakers, no matter how temperately they formed their phrases, limited their invocations so softly. Vice President J.D. Vance compared our current situation to pagan child sacrifice. He intoned:

“I read an article some time ago about classic archaeology, of all things. And one particular piece of information has haunted me: that one of the telltale signs of an ancient brothel in the pagan world was that you’d always find a large number of baby skeletons nearby — a lot of baby skeletons; and those bones predominantly belonged to boys because, unlike little girls, those boys would be of no use to the future adults who were running those brothels.”

Those stark words affronted some critics who are apparently more comfortable with the discarding of the slain unborn via incineration or flushing them into sewer lines. For a more centrist description of the significance of abortion, the vice president was equally vivid:

“Our vision is simple. We want life to thrive in the United States of America. We want Americans, every American from all walks of life, to have happy, healthy children, and we want them to raise those kids with confidence that they’ll do well and grow up in safety and prosperity, that they’ll have access to good jobs, great schools, safe streets, and warm houses in which to raise their kids. And we want all of our American families to be able to do it with the confidence that their nation will stand with them, just as they have stood with the United States of America.”

Whichever form of eloquence one prefers, these exhortations have one thing in common: they reject the notion of localism. It is unimaginable that any nation, much less the one “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” would gaze impassively on the erection of blood-stained pyramids in Chicago or turn a blind eye to batches of generic abortion pills shipped to anyone who orders them through the mail. Whether he wishes to or not, the vice president is summoning the nation to a new course the administration has not merely resisted but undermined to date.

Other leaders these last few days have similarly summoned the public to a deeper passion for life. Just before Vice President Vance spoke, President Trump appeared at the March via video and said that every unborn child has “infinite” worth and is a gift from God. In his Proclamation for National Sanctity of Human Life Day 2026, a tradition begun by President Reagan in 1984, President Trump went to the heart of the matter, the consonance of a right to life with America’s founding principles:

“On July 4, 1776, our Declaration of Independence righteously affirmed that every human being is endowed by Almighty God with the unalienable right to life. In the 250 years since, our commitment to this truth has been the source of our strength and the foundation of our greatness — and it has helped America remain the single greatest force for justice and human flourishing in the history of the world.”

With language like this regarding a human right that transcends age, race, or condition of dependency — a right that is “unalienable” and the legacy of those who wrote and ratified our Constitution — no pro-life administration can appear on a dais and disown steps to affirm these truths we hold “self-evident.” On this the Trump administration did as other pro-life administrations have done before, announcing a string of welcome actions, from extending the scope of the Reagan-era Mexico City Policy, to enforcing federal conscience legislation against states that have attempted to force physicians to refer for abortions, to ending federal funding for alleged research that relies on tissues taken from the bodies of the aborted unborn.

Welcome as these steps are (though some certainly did not require a year to be accomplished), there remains the widely acknowledged “elephant in the room.” This particular pachyderm is restless. In its first year, beginning six months after aggressively diluting the historic pro-life Republican platform, the Trump administration:

1. Approved a cheaper generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, a drug which is likely responsible in toto for more than two-thirds of U.S. abortions;
2. Opposed several pro-life states in federal court seeking to enforce their state laws barring telehealth distribution of the abortion pill regimen;
3. Carried out its 2024 campaign pledge, first articulated by then-candidate J.D. Vance, to support access to mifepristone as approved by the Food and Drug Administration;
4. Cast doubt, in the president’s own words, on its determination to protect the half-century old Hyde Amendment and its application to health insurance plans financed under the tax credit scheme known as Obamacare.

Then, to top matters off, just days after the buses bearing excited marchers left Washington, D.C., the Trump Department of Justice lent its weight again to protecting a federal abortion policy from action by the states, actions that the Trump administration had said would be the proper level of government for decisions on life. On Tuesday of this week, the DOJ filed a brief in a case brought by the state of Louisiana, which has passed legislation to treat mifepristone as a controlled substance and now seeks to prosecute entities that prescribe and ship abortion pills into the state in violation of its life-protection statutes. The Trump administration challenges Louisiana’s standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place and contends that Louisiana’s action is premature, as the administration itself may take action on the pills after FDA review. The brief likewise opposes the standing of a Louisiana woman who was subjected to the abortion pill when a boyfriend ordered them from another state and pressured her to take them.

All rhetoric aside, the administration has not earned public trust on this array of questions. Its consistent defense of inaction has been purely political — that avoiding the issue or demoting it to the states is necessary for their own victory at the ballot box. The FDA case underscores how the idea of a states-only legal regimen cannot work in the era of pharmaceutical abortions. In August 2024, J.D. Vance told the nation the Trump-Vance ticket would “veto a national abortion ban” if it came to the president’s desk. “I can absolutely commit that,” Vance said on “Meet the Press.” It is not hard to see why the administration has not earned the benefit of the doubt about their intentions with respect to an FDA review that will certainly override the states and is contributing to the loss of a million lives and harm to many thousands of women each year.

With these confusing and contradictory signals proceeding, there is no doubt that marches for life must continue in state capitals and, above all, in Washington. When it comes to the urgency of the stakes involved, look no further than to the speeches of the people making our national decisions for and against life.