[National Review] The March for Life is about so much more than we ever notice. Especially this brutal January.I’ve been going to the March for Life since I was in college. After a few years of getting lost in the crowd, my new tradition is to run or Uber ahead to the Supreme Court, spend some time with the demonstrators and pray-ers outside (this is usually where there is any kind of small two-sides clash), and then meet the march on its way up the Hill, getting a sense of the size and composition. And, oh my goodness. It is overwhelming. I run into friends and colleagues and readers. I see people from North Dakota, Nebraska, and Sydney, Australia. (There was a group taking notes in hopes of replicating it down under.) It’s a grand reunion and meet-up of people not only protesting the Supreme Court’s 46-year-old Roe v. Wade decision but celebrating life.
The March itself, and so many of the events around it, are simply and powerfully countercultural. Consider the Mass the night before. There were 500 seminarians there ‐ that is, young men studying and being formed to be Catholic priests. That’s remarkable. What I wish I could capture, and ever more so in recent days, are the faces. The gazes of hope and joy. Even as some of these young people ‐ so many are high-school and college students ‐ and their chaperones are exhausted, but most everyone is. But once you catch a glance of someone, so often, you see love. Love of life. Love of fellow men. Love of innocence. Love of a confidence that God has you here for a purpose.