Forty-seven young pro-life Canadians ventured southward to the National March For Life in Washington, D.C., Jan. 23 to bask in solidarity with American defenders of the preborn and to help deliver a message that the future should be teeming with life as God intended.  

U.S. Vice President JD Vance was the most anticipated speaker. Addressing the tens of thousands of pro-life attendees, he noted that he and his wife, Usha, are expecting their fourth child this summer — heeding his own 2025 March for Life call for more American families and babies.

Kim Headley, a youth coordinator and bookkeeper at Campaign Life Coalition, the political arm of the Canadian pro-life movement, told The Catholic Register that she “liked that Vance was willing to speak about abortion as an act of killing” more than his message last year “about wanting more babies to be born.”

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Specifically, Vance said that “from the skeletons in brothels to the child sacrifice of the Mayans, the mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded rather than the blessings to cherish that they are.” He added that the choice ahead is “whether we will remain a civilization under God or whether we ultimately return to the paganism that dominated the past.”

Headley wants the resoluteness to be present in the Trump government’s actions. She has caught notice of how the administration has gone back and forth with defunding and refunding Planned Parenthood and has, thus far, not meaningfully cracked down on access to the abortion pill.

Gideon Spevak, a fellow youth coordinator for Campaign Life, viewed Vance’s appearance as a highlight, but concurred with Headley in wanting continued meaningful strides to be made “while Trump has the White House and Republicans hold both the Senate and House of Representatives.”

Trump himself appeared at the rally via video message. He said the battle to rebuild a culture that supports life “must be fought, must be won not only in the corridors of power, but above all, in the hearts and souls of the people.” He touted how his administration is “restoring religious liberty in America” to help the pro-life community wage this fight.

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In recent years, the U.S. March for Life has helped energize the Canadian pro-life movement, leading up to its March for Life in May. This was particularly the case in 2023, just over half a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.

Spevak suggested that in 2026, the Conservative Party of Canada convention from Jan. 29 to 31 could prove to be more galvanizing.

“It will do more to build momentum if we successfully remove the (article) in the policy handbook that prevents the party from supporting legislation restricting abortion,” said Spevak.

Article 86 of the current policy handbook reads: “A Conservative Government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.”

Both Spevak and Headley are unsure if voting delegates will remove this article or not. The latter warned that the “party is at risk of alienating its social conservative grassroots base” by silencing the convictions of pro-life members.

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Campaign Life also wants the Conservatives to endorse “euthanasia-free sanctuary spaces, enshrining conscience protection for institutions, protecting ‘advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose,” among other policy resolutions.

The 2026 National March for Life in Canada is scheduled for May 14 on Parliament Hill. The official theme will be unveiled later this month.