PRO-LIFE ADVOCATES ATTEND THE ANNUAL MARCH FOR LIFE IN WASHINGTON ON JAN. 21, 2022

Nearly seven months since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the individual state legislatures, tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists will descend on Washington, D.C., for the 50th annual March for Life on Jan. 21.

Since Roe‘s overturning, 24 states have banned abortion or are likely to do so, according to a January 2023 report by the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights. Legal challenges are pending in several of those states.

On Jan. 11, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a pair of symbolic anti-abortion bills that are not expected to be acted upon in the Democratic-controlled Senate. One of the bills, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, would require health care providers to care for infants born after an attempted abortion. A 2002 federal law already mandates that health care professionals provide medical care to infants born at any gestational age.

Mancini called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act “commonsense and compassionate.”

In October, she also described as “sensible and compassionate” a bill that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, sponsored to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Other antiabortion leaders supported the legislation even though congressional Republicans distanced themselves from it.

Democrats seized upon Graham’s bill to portray the GOP as extremist on the issue, a strategy that seemed to resonate with voters. The Democrats increased their majority in the U.S. Senate while Republicans underperformed in securing the House with a slim majority.

Meanwhile, voters in Michigan, California and Vermont in November chose to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions. In Kentucky and Kansas, voters rejected constitutional amendments that would have said residents in those states had no right to an abortion.

“It seems to me we’re discovering that voters are generally in the middle” on abortion, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California Davis School of Law who is a leading historian on the abortion debate in the United States. In the middle? Sadly, what our Creator says on the issue is no longer relevant and therefore not a consideration. It is another sure “end times” sign.