The 2024 March for Life was an important time. Yes, we still suffer from the effects of Roe v. Wade (1973), that U.S. Supreme Court decision that has so shaped the last 50-plus years of existence, so much for the worse, in our beloved nation, the United States of America. 

For over half a century (or more, in the case of New York state), through the scourge of abortion, the most innocent and defenseless have been slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers. This tragedy has happened again and again. 

Girls and boys, black, Asian, Hispanic, white, and so many other ethnicities have been massacred. 

While the march was focused on abortion, we must remember that pro-life means all life, from womb to tomb. Pro-life means no abortions, no assisted suicide, and no death penalities. 

Imagine for a moment who those aborted babies, some of whom would now be in their 50s, could have been. Would a girl or boy, murdered in the womb, have been president of the United States of America? Would one of these massacred boys or girls have been the Nobel Prize winner for Physics or Literature? Would one of these girls or boys wiped out before birth have been your pastor or parochial vicar in your parish? 

Yes, we have sacrificed many infants to abortion, and it is now enshrined in the constitutions of several states in our American union. 

This wholesale murder of these children, who are not merely clumps of cells that can be easily extinguished, has become the norm for us in New York state. 

And even though since 2022 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion, we still need, perhaps more than ever, to march and to give witness to the sanctity of every human life from conception until natural death. 

And that is why we march in Washington, D.C., each year. Will it make much of a difference to our administration? Probably not. But witness we must. How many women, old and young, daughters and mothers, marched, rejoicing that they had kept their babies, despite the amazing pressure against that idea? 

How many men marched to show that they are not a victim of “toxic masculinity,” that effeminizing reality that so many of our men in the U.S. have to face today? Men are made to be fathers, to be carers, to love their wives and children into heaven. 

How blessed to see the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal from our New York area in the march. How blessed to see parishes from the diocese, both in Queens and Brooklyn, led by Deacon John Cantirino and several diaconal candidates witnessing for life! How blessed to have Bishop James Massa, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn and rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary, march and witness, along with his seminarians at Dunwoodie and some of his faculty, including Fathers Michael Bruno, John Cush, and Joseph Holcomb. 

Yes, we find ourselves in a world looking not for words, but for witnesses. There is no single moral cause greater than our witness to the pro-life movement. 

Let’s pray that we can and will keep up our personal witness by prayer and work.