First-timers, especially evangelicals, are expected to be a big part of Friday’s March for Life as President Trump made history as the first sitting president to join the anti-abortion rally.
The march has seen massive growth in evangelical attendance since it was first organized the year after the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, said Jeanne Mancini, the president of the March for Life, which began largely as a Catholic event.
“Increasing evangelical participation at the March for Life is, and has been, an organizational goal and broader win for the movement,” Mancini said.
“Inviting wonderful Evangelical leaders like … Pastor David Platt from McLean Bible Church, Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family, to participate is one small way we do this. We want to do everything possible to welcome pro-life people of all faiths to the March for Life.”
Evangelist Franklin Graham shared on Facebook Wednesday morning: “I’m going to do something on Friday that I’ve never done before — I’m going to march,” the son of Billy Graham wrote. “I’m going to DC to walk in the March for Life.”
Graham, who is the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, as well as his daughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, said they are attending the event in an effort to emphasize the importance of the issue to “the courts, Congress, the media, and the world.”
“Every life matters to God and should matter to us,” they wrote.
Jack Graham, the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church (unrelated to Franklin Graham), will be joined at the march by 100 members of the Plano, Texas, church where they have operated a pregnancy center for 30 years.
“This is my first time,” Graham told Fox News. “We’re at a tipping point on the issue of the sanctity of life in the country and the very fact that the president is speaking live for the first time just indicates the massive movement of life for evangelicals in the country.”
Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America (CWA), who attended for the first time in the 90s, lauds Mancini for “a fantastic job of enlarging the coalition” and “making sure everyone feels welcome, Catholic, evangelical.”