New Day in Washington for Pro-Life Marchers

CNS ^ | 01/19/2007 | Susan Jones and Payton Hoegh

[lpeterboyd]

New Day in Washington for Pro-Life Marchers
By Susan Jones and Payton Hoegh
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Correspondent
January 19, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - For more than three decades, pro-life activists have been coming to Washington every January to mark, with sadness, the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

The challenges are bigger than ever this year, they say, with pro-choice Democrats in control of Congress.

Pro-life activists plan to address that reality at a Monday-morning news conference on Capitol Hill. The news conference will be followed by a pro-life worship service and the annual March for Life.

"It's a new day in Washington and that means a new challenge for pro-lifers," said Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister and head of the National Pro-Life Religious Council. "Christ said we must be as clever as serpents and harmless as doves. With pro-choice leaders in the House and Senate, we may need to be downright snaky," Schenck said on his website.

The Roe v. Wade decision, handed down 34 years ago on Jan. 22, 1973, has resulted in an estimated 48 million abortions in this country, pro-life groups said.

A representative of the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest pro-life group, said this year, activists will lobby lawmakers on partial birth abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell research, all of which they strongly oppose.

In a series of weekend events, March for Life participants will hear messages from various speakers on the abortion issue, including some who have had abortions and who are now voicing their regrets to "put a human face on their trauma and begin to heal," organizers said.