Donald Trump Says the March for Life Will Be ‘Very Large’

Last weekend, between three and four million Americans marched to advocate for civil rights during the Women’s March on Washington in D.C. and other cities around the nation. On Monday morning, Donald Trump promptly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which bans federal funding to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on them. And tomorrow, thousands of anti-abortion advocates will descend on Washington, D.C. to attend the annual March for Life, an event that protests “legalized abortion on demand.”

President Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway has been announced a speaker at tomorrow’s march, and organizers have teased that another high-ranking member of the administration, Vice President Mike Pence, will attend. (President Trump was invited too.)

In an interview with ABC’s David Muir, President Trump scolded the media for not covering the March for Life in the past, and predicted that tomorrow’s march would receive a large crowd. “You’re going to have a large crowd on Friday too, which is mostly pro-life people,” Trump said.

“I don’t want to compare crowd sizes again,” Muir replied.

Indeed, the March of Life organizers have a tough act to follow. But Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, told the New York Times, “I don’t think that these numbers are the most important.” She continued, “The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion.”

Mancini supports the Trump administration, but there are four actions, she told the Chicago Tribune, that need to be taken within the next year in order for the administration to keep that support: Appoint an anti–abortion justice to the Supreme Court, make the Hyde Amendment permanent, ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy nationwide and halt federal funding to Planned Parenthood unless it stops performing abortions. (Currently, abortion procedures account for 3% of Planned Parenthood’s reproductive health services according to the organization.)

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday following the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule (aka the Mexico City Policy), “I think the president, it’s no secret, has made himself-made it very clear that he’s a pro-life president.”

[H/T New York Times]