Last Friday, 110 Hillsdale College students joined the ranks of somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 people in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Marking 40 years since the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade, this year’s march attracted more pro-life advocates than ever before. March for Life continues to grow since its founding in 1974, when the first March for Life drew in 20,000 people.
Members of Hillsdale’s Students for Life organized the trip, which they see as more than a road trip.
“We really tried to focus on how this is a pilgrimage this year,” said senior Jordan Adams, president of Students for Life. “It was a very sacrificial trip.”
One of the things the leaders organized was the substantial amount of group prayer on the bus trips to and from D.C.
“Prayer is the main function of the trip,” Adams said. “I believe it’s helping somebody with the pain of abortion. It might be for the changing of minds as well.”
Adams said that everyone participated in the prayer, and added that some students requested even more prayer for next year.
The students boarded two charter buses on Thursday evening, and drove all night to arrive in Washington, D.C. by 6:30 a.m. on Friday. That left them half an hour to grab breakfast and head to the Verizon Center for the preliminary youth rally and Catholic mass.
“They had the timing perfectly,” said chaperone Fred Yaniga, assistant professor of German.
They left from the Verizon Center for the March at noon, and managed to stay together as a group despite the crush of the crowd.
“Having 600,000 people was definitely awesome,” said freshman Emma Smith, vice president of Students for Life.
Yaniga described the march as much more of a “shuffle” than in previous years.
“This year it was wall-to-wall people, and there was no open space for the three hours of the march,” he said. “It was just compact.”
When the march ended around 3 p.m., the students gathered at the Kirby Center where they heard from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and several Hillsdale faculty.
The group then boarded the buses and headed back to Michigan. They arrived in Hillsdale around 7 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Before the students disembarked, Adams got on the microphone and told the students that they should look at the march as just the beginning of what they can do for the pro-life cause.
“The one thing you do for life this year might be a starting point for you,” he said.
He said that in addition to prayer, one of the practical aspects of the march is that is serves as a “primer” for more involvement in the movement.
“A lot of people are inspired by the march when they see it to become more involved,” Jordan said.
Hillsdale Students for Life provide ways for students to become locally involved in the movement. One of the biggest is helping out at the Alpha Omega Women’s Care Center, and another is sidewalk counseling at the abortion clinic in Ann Arbor.
“We really want people to stay involved with the local community and the women around here,” Adams said. “They need the help.”
