The March for Life Education and Defense Fund on Wednesday announced the new theme for the upcoming annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., this January.
The theme for the 49th annual march in 2022 will be “Equality Begins In The Womb,” highlighting the personhood and rights of the unborn child.
“The pro-life movement recognizes the immense responsibility this nation bears to restore equal rights to its most defenseless citizens in the womb,” Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life said Wednesday at a press conference to announce the theme.
“Our hope and our prayer is that this year’s theme, ‘Equality Begins in the Womb’ will allow not only for hearts and minds to be changed but that there will also be included in this robust debate the topic of the unborn child,” she said.
This past January’s theme was “Together Strong: Life Unites.” This year’s march was a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than the usual in-person march in the nation’s capital’s chilly winter temperatures.
The March for Life occurs every year in Washington around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide. The event draws thousands of participants from across the country each year, who come to peacefully protest the 1973 ruling. High school and college students, mothers and fathers with small children, and young adults have all come out in force in recent years to express their pro-life convictions at the march.
Mancini emphasized that the large crowds the march draws every year are a blow to the ubiquitous claim among abortion advocates that Roe v. Wade is “settled law.”
“It shows them that it’s not settled law,” she said. “We don’t get smaller, we don’t draw less of a line in the sand, we get bigger every year.”
Next year’s march will be held on Friday, January 21.
Marchers attend a rally on the National Mall and then walk up Constitution Avenue to the steps of the Supreme Court. There, post-abortive women share moving testimony about how their abortions affected them and the healing they have since experienced.
March for Life released a video to go along with its theme announcement. The video follows the growth of the fetus through the advancing weeks of pregnancy, showing the unborn child at different stages of development.
“I can finally see you! And you know what? You’re just like me,” the narrator says as the video ends, showing a montage of newborns with their mothers.
The Supreme Court began a new term this month and is set to hear several cases on controversial issues soon, including a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In that case, Mississippi is arguing against Roe vs. Wade’s ban on states outlawing abortion before the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually considered around 22 weeks of pregnancy.