UPDATED …
“Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump said, in the first appearance by a sitting president at the annual anti-abortion event.
NBC NEWS, WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday became the first sitting president to attend the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington, presenting himself as an unwavering advocate for limiting abortion access.
“Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump said to an energized crowd. “And as the Bible tells us, each person is wonderfully made.”
In his brief remarks, Trump criticized Democrats and falsely accused them of supporting abortion “up until the moment of birth.”
“They are coming after me because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those that have no voice, and we will win because we know how to win,” the president said. “Together we are the voice for the voiceless.”
Every year since 1974, thousands of anti-abortion activists from around the country have marched from the White House Ellipse to the Capitol in protest of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion.
But no sitting Republican president has ever made the trip from the White House to the National Mall for the event, instead generally opting to address the group via video or phone message — sometimes from just a few hundred feet away.
“It is my profound honor to be the first president in history to attend the March for Life,” Trump said. “We are here for a very simple reason: to defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their God-given potential.”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also attended the event, along with several elected officials.
Trump, who described himself in 1999 to NBC as “pro-choice,” has been supportive of the rally in the past … Read more.
Trump’s plan to attend March for Life sends clear signal to evangelicals
January 23, 2020
Yahoo News – If there was ever any doubt whether religious conservatives will stick with President Trump — and there really wasn’t — it went away this week when the president announced he would be the first president to attend the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
For nearly half a century, huge crowds of anti-abortion activists have thronged to Washington each January to march from the White House Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol — often in freezing temperatures and even in snowstorms — to protest Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
Every year, the anti-abortion crowd and its advocates have complained that the news media ignored their efforts.
And every year, until now, that sense of being overlooked, ignored and minimized — a psychology that is inherent to many strands of white evangelicalism — was reinforced by the fact that even conservative Republican presidents who supported their cause wouldn’t show up at their event in person.
Republican presidents who did anything sent video messages of support.
Even Trump did that the past two years, though he did show more support than normal by sending Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian. The marchers gathered on the National Mall or the Ellipse watching the president’s message on a video screen could turn their head and see the White House and wonder why the president didn’t come out and speak in person.
During many of the marches, the president was traveling, perhaps intentionally so the press couldn’t ask that very same question. But marchers didn’t necessarily know the president’s itinerary; they knew only that he wasn’t there.
Trump’s announcement provoked both excitement and latent resentment at past pro-life presidents.
“It’s great that Trump is speaking at the March For Life … ” READ MORE.
