Reflection for the March for Life (2026)


In years past people stepped into Washington’s hard cold as witnesses. A witness doesn’t come to win a vibe.

A witness comes to say what’s real. And what’s real is simple: a human life isn’t a problem to manage.

It’s a mystery to receive.

Yes—Roe and Casey have been overruled. At last. They were named for what they were: a legal permission slip for the strong to decide the fate of the weak. On June 24, 2022, the Court said plainly that Roe and Casey are overruled, and that abortion regulation is returned to the people and their elected representatives. Fine.

But don’t confuse a courtroom sentence with a converted nation. The wound has only changed rooms. It hasn’t stopped bleeding.

Our age is tidy with its sins. It rinses its hands in scented words. It won’t say killing; it says choice. It won’t say child; it says tissue. That’s how the lie stays warm: it wraps itself in soft syllables until conscience nods off.

The vocabulary gets cleaner as the deed gets darker. We call it “health care” the way a thief calls it “redistribution.”

But truth doesn’t evaporate because we rename it.

The unborn child isn’t an argument. She's a presence—small, hidden, and entirely human. Like a quiet knock you can’t un-hear, that life presses on the world, asking the oldest question:
Will you make room for me?
When a culture must celebrate what should be mourned, it’s confessing—without intending to—that something's gone terribly wrong.

So we march with clean hands and fierce tenderness. For the child, yes. And also for the mother whose fear has been packaged as freedom and sold at retail. For the father who disappeared and called it “complicated.” For the clinician whose heart learned to call darkness “care” in order to sleep at night.

The Gospel doesn’t train us to sneer. It trains us to see. And if we see, we can’t reduce anyone in this story to a villain-shaped silhouette.

We tell the truth because we love. We serve because we mean it.

If the theme is true—life is a gift—then our witness has to look like gifts. Not slogans alone, but diapers and rent help. Rides to appointments. A meal that shows up without a lecture. Friendship without interrogation. Parishes that don’t punish the poor for being poor. Confessionals where mercy isn’t a rumor.

Laws matter; they draw lines the strong mustn’t cross. But the opposite of abortion isn’t only a statute. It’s a people who refuse the theology of death and choose—costly, practical, stubbornly—life.

Because the world will always offer “choice” as a god. And gods always demand a sacrifice. The question is only this: who gets laid on the altar—your comfort, or the child?

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