Almost immediately after the people of the United States elected Donald Trump to the presidency, thousands of protesters marched in several cities around the nation to express their disappointment with the results and to declare that Trump was #NotMyPresident on Facebook and Twitter.
The protests, which have since turned into violent riots with shootings, have been heavily covered by major media outlets. Many even declared them to be peaceful, including the Los Angeles Times and Miami New Times, even though there is hardly a consensus that shutting down and blocking traffic is exactly peaceful.
As Fox News recently reported, Planned Parenthood affiliates may be behind some of the protests, as they had placed ads right before the election hiring workers to “STOP TRUMP.” As Fox News explained:
[The ads] were placed by a Planned Parenthood affiliate in major cities like Boston, Denver, Columbus, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh right before the election to defeat the candidacy of Donald Trump. However, most of them are still active on Craigslist, fueling questions about whether the group is now among those feeding the post-election anti-Trump protests across the country.
Many of the ads have Planned Parenthood Action, a PAC, emblazoned across the top and all of them list phone numbers belonging to the Community Outreach Group, a for-profit organization formed by Planned Parenthood as ‘a vendor of large-scale advocacy.’ Protesting is among the tasks listed on its website.
Americans have a right to peacefully protest, which is why a truly peaceful protest takes place every year at our nation’s capitol and has each year since 1974 — the March for Life. Since the U.S. Supreme Court granted the sweeping so-called right to abortion on demand throughout pregnancy with Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, over 58 million children have been killed by abortion. If that’s not reason enough to protest, what is?
Without the right to life, there can be no other rights, including the right to protest.
If you ask a pro-lifer who has participated in the March for Life before, it’s likely he or she is not doing so for the media attention. That’s because for all the coverage the anti-Trump protests receive, the media refuses to accurately cover the March for Life, if they do so at all. Mainstream media outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post grossly underestimated the number of people at the March in 2016, with the former noting that it drew “hundreds” and the latter referring to the “small, faithful crowd” in attendance.
Even with an unpredictable snowstorm, the 2016 March for Life drew an estimated 40,000 pro-lifers. Previous years had seen ranges of record-breaking 250,000-500,000 pro-lifers. As Newsbusters reported, the networks mostly ignored the March and instead, focused on a baby panda, which received 26 times more coverage.
The pro-lifers who show up to the March for Life are there as a testament to life. They let our nation, especially those who run it, know that there are people who believe in standing up to be a voice for the voiceless. Oftentimes, the marchers are a young and diverse crowd. Nancy Keenan, the former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, lamented this a few years ago when she was in the area during the March. Young pro-lifers can attend conferences during the March for Life week to give them further training in speaking up effectively, including the Students for Life of America conference and the Cardinal O’Connor conference.
Others who attend the March are women who have had abortions. Some of them come to tell their stories through Silent No More, in hopes of encouraging today’s women not to make the same mistakes they did.
During the March for Life, pro-abortion counter protesters have arrived with crude signs and language in an attempt to engage pro-lifers. Some have even mocked Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a post-abortive, pro-life icon.
Every year, there is the opportunity for the media to cover hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters at the March for Life — none of whom are looting, starting fires, or blocking traffic. These are people advocating for love of life, for both mother and child.
Apparently, though, that’s not worthy enough for major news outlets.
