Anti-abortion advocates look to state legislatures at the second post-Roe March for Life

CNN —

Anti-abortion advocates gathered in Washington, DC, on Friday for the annual March for Life — the second since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections.

Attendees who convened on the National Mall on a cold, snowy day said with Roe v. Wade overturned, they’re now looking to states to pass abortion bans. At least 14 Republican-majority states have banned the procedure with little to no exceptions, and seven others have limited access.

“What’s next is the state level,” said Blake Miller, member of a pro-life group at North Carolina State University. “We want to take it to the states, have pro-life marches at the states and hopefully get our state legislators to get a ban on abortion up to conception.”

Friday’s national march — the theme of which was “Pro-life: With Every Woman, For Every Child” — precedesmarches scheduled in the coming weeks in more than a dozen states, including in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and North Dakota, where abortion bans are already in effect.

Jim Hogan, who traveled to Washington from Pennsylvania for the march,stressed that “we have to continue to march and to help persuade people.”

“Fifty years of making it okay to abort, I don’t expect in a year everyone’s mind to change,” said Hogan.

This year’s march followed the newroute set by the 2023 march,ending at the US Capitol instead of the Supreme Court “to symbolize that the battle post-Roe has shifted to the legislature,” one of the organizers then told CNN.

The march followed a rally where House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed the crowd. In his remarks, Johnson saidthat he is “a product of unplanned pregnancy” and is “very profoundly grateful” that his parents “chose life.”

“See what we have to do