March for Life 2010 draws record crowd

The Supreme Court, with throngs of marchers in the
foreground

The thirty-seventh annual March for Life took place yesterday in Washington, DC, with several northern and southern New Jersey contingents participating. Unofficial estimates of the crowd size vary from 250,000 to 400,000, which would be the largest crowd that the annual event has drawn.

New Jersey conservative activist Andrew P. Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia, led a 93-member contingent of home-school students, families, and older adults that traveled to Washington on two chartered buses to participate in the rally and march. Other New Jersey contingents were on hand, including several from multiple towns in North Jersey and at least one from Trenton.

Schlafly cited an on-air estimate reported by the Eternal Word Television Network as stating that 400,000 people were in attendance. After the march, he enthusiastically predicted that next year he would lead three buses, at 47 passengers each.

A protester holds a hand-made sign

OneNewsNow correspondent Charlie Butts estimated that 250,000 people attended; Lillian Kwon of The Christian Post estimated 300,000. However, direct observation easily supports the 400,000-person estimate. The crowd was at least as dense as was the crowd for the 9/12 March on Washington last year, and filled 7th Street W, Constitution Avenue, and 1st Street E to the limit of visibility.

The participants varied in age from very young children to elderly people, including several in wheelchairs. (One of Schlafly's marchers, apparently suffering from achondroplastic dwarfism, was still determined to participate, even if in a wheelchair.) Contrary to a report released before-the-fact by Newsweek, many young women were in attendance, and contributed some of the most enthusiastic voices in support of the pro-life position. As the march progressed, sympathetic onlookers lined both sides of Constitution Avenue, and even some office workers watched and waved to the marchers from the roof of an office building overlooking the Mall near the West Lawn.

Four onlookers watch from atop the
Washington Gas Company on Constitution
Avenue

Notably absent from this year's March was any counter-demonstration visible from either the rally or the march. This negates an impression that CNN's Rich Sanchez, as cited by Jack Cashill writing in The American Thinker, apparently tried to give, that pro- and anti-March sentiment appeared equal. One of Schlafly's marchers said later, "When 400,000 pro-lifers descend on Washington like this, how can anyone compete? Better not even to show up!"

The March for Life event began at noon with a rally held on the Washington Mall just west of 7th Street West, or midway between the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill. The march itself began at 2:00 p.m., north on 7th Street NW to Constitution Avenue, then east along Constitution Avenue to 1st Street NE (thus moving between the Capitol's Senate Wing and the Senate's three office buildings), then south on 1st Street NE to the Supreme Court.

This Examiner traveled to Washington with Andrew Schlafly's marchers and was on the ground at the rally and march. This report is based in part on direct observation.

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