02/07/2026
A biweekly publication of Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice • WEEK OF February 2, 2026
On Friday January 23, 2026 tens of thousands of people descended on Washington D.C. to participate in the National March for Life. I heard on the radio that the D.C. March for Life was the largest of its kind in the world! Then I asked myself: where else does it happen? I looked it up and found out that many so-called rallies for life were happening in many places around the world. Witnessing those anti-choice events, and the media coverage they galvanize, is always disheartening and discouraging. In this issue, I want to reflect below on the "pro-life" language and how we can counter the narrative that goes with it.
Rev. Muriel Schmid, PhD
Executive Director, KRCRC
The March for Life in D.C. takes place every year around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Founded by anti-abortion activist Nellie Gray, the first March took place in 1974 and was then instituted as a yearly event. "The march was originally intended to be a one-time event, in hopes that SCOTUS would reverse Roe v. Wade immediately a year after its ruling. However, after the first march in 1974, Gray took steps to institute the rally as a yearly event until Roe v. Wade was overturned by incorporating more grassroots anti-abortion activists into the march..." [see Wikipedia]
Despite the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, the March for Life continues to take place and attracts more and more people. "The March for Life returned in 2023, with participants celebrating the demise of the Roe, though they acknowledged that their dream of the end of abortion in the country had not yet become a reality... [so] activists still attend the March in subsequent years to commemorate the Dobbs decision and to urge one another to continue the fight to completely ban abortion." [see Wikipedia]
This year, Vice-President JD Vance addressed the crowd and "said during the rally he needed to 'address an elephant in the room' that President Donald Trump and others in the administration have not made enough progress on anti-abortion initiatives during the first year of unified Republican control of the federal government." His main argument revolved around the idea of building a national "culture of life."
Recently, Pope Leo XIV shocked the Catholic world when he asserted that being pro-life could not be reduced to being anti-abortion. He mentioned the need to protect the migrant communities and fight against death penalty as necessary elements of a pro-life position. Honestly, it was about time that a religious leader would challenge the principle of pro-life coming from the anti-abortion activists! And we could add several other issues to the list: gun control, infant mortality, incarceration rate, opioids crisis... The so-called pro-life movement is so narrow that it harms women and communities as we can read in the news every week as people experience the reality of total abortion bans in many States.
How do we fight this rhetoric? Planned Parenthood encourages us to stay away from the binary pro-life/pro-choice as not to oversimplify what is at stake in this debate. And, of course, the tenets of Reproductive Justice calls us to articulate a broad vision for the pro-choice movement, a true pro-life vision. SisterSong reminds us that Reproductive Justice combines reproductive rights and social justice. Together, we can reclaim the pro-life narrative and resist oppression and exclusion.
