432 tri-campus students participating in the Notre Dame Right to Life club trip joined in on the 52nd March for Life in Washington DC on Friday, Jan. 24.
The club annually programs a bus trip to the march, which includes transportation and accommodations. Nine buses left on Thursday evening and arrived in DC around 7 a.m. From there, students attended adoration and mass at St. Charles Catholic Church in Arlington, which has hosted Notre Dame students for decades.
Students next attended the pre-march rally which Vice President JD Vance spoke at. Following the rally, students marched on the streets of DC, beginning at the Washington Monument and passing by the Capitol and the Supreme Court.
Right to Life offered two departure trips, one leaving Friday night and one leaving Saturday night. Two buses left on Friday, and seven buses worth of students stayed the night in St. Charles Catholic Church and left the next night after having a free day in DC.
Sophomore Ellen Burks co-planned and led the trip, which is sponsored by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and cost students $35.
“I have been attending the March for Life since I was about 10 years old, my first few times actually being with the Notre Dame group, so it was kind of full circle for me to be able to lead the trip this year,” Burks wrote. “I have always considered the March for Life to be an excellent demonstration of how prominent the pro-life position is in American society, and since the march was how I first got involved in the pro-life movement, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to take a more active role in bringing people to the largest annual pro-life event in the world.”
After watching the movie “Unplanned” during her freshman year of high school, Right to Life president Jackie Nguyen decided to get involved in the anti-abortion movement, explaining she was moved by “the reality of what abortion is and how it harms women.” This year’s March for Life was Nguyen’s fourth time in attendance.
“I went first my senior year in high school, but I’d wanted to go for a long time, and it kind of speaks to the … heart of what the pro-life movement is,” Nguyen said. “I kind of had my big … realization that I really was wanting to be a part of the pro-life movement when I was a freshman in high school.”
While in DC, St. Charles Catholic Church provided pizza to students both Friday and Saturday nights while the Notre Dame Club of Washington DC provided breakfasts.
“The most difficult and the most rewarding aspects of the trip actually ended up going hand in hand,” Berks said. “It was definitely a challenge to be able to coordinate such a large group to travel across the country, but it was also so rewarding to be able to step back and see the sheer number of people from the Notre Dame community that care so much about the pro-life cause that they are willing to take an overnight bus and march all day to take a stand for the rights of the unborn.”
According to Nguyen, because there are so many people in the club, a large amount of people naturally sign up for the trip. However, Nguyen noted people often sign up at the last minute for the trip as well, as about 50 people signed up to attend in the week leading up to the march.
“We’re never gonna stop marching until abortion is unthinkable. I think that's the big concept, like after Roe v. Wade, ‘Why are you still marching?’ Nguyen said. “Women are always gonna need to be supported.”
Nguyen said there is “such a need for” the march, even now that the fight has “shifted towards supporting the women.”
“I had heard about it, but as a freshman, I was too intimidated to go all by myself,” sophomore Andrea Jasso said. “And then this year I heard … my friends saying how it was such an amazing experience, like such a bucket list item to do. I told myself last year, I was like, ‘I need to go next year when this happens.’”
Jasso is a member of the Right to Life club. According to the club’s website, Notre Dame Right to Life has over 700 members and is the largest anti-abortion student group in the country.
“My favorite part in total has always been the community. Friendships made on the trip are absolutely substantial,” Nguyen said. “I met my best friend there when I was a freshman. I didn't know anybody. I was at Saint Mary’s, and I think that you never have an opportunity to know somebody to that level until you get on a bus with them for 12 hours and spend the whole day with them.”
Nguyen transferred her sophomore year to Notre Dame from Saint Mary’s. She said the March for Life trip is “like the crux of our club’s community.” Burks echoed Nguyen’s recognition of community.
“My favorite aspect of the trip was the camaraderie among all of my fellow marchers. I love to see people who may have different interests, backgrounds, and even political views being able to unite under the common goal of upholding the dignity of the human person and protecting life from conception until natural death,” Burks wrote. “It is often easy to think you are alone or in the minority for holding this value, but going on a trip like this with so many different people, especially so many young people, makes you realize how strong this desire to protect the unborn is in our generation.”
Jasso offered a different perspective on why she enjoyed the march. After Jasso and sophomore Lauryn Biondi were separated from the group of Notre Dame students at the beginning of the march, the two watched the march from the side until they spotted the Right to Life club.
“When you're in the march, you don’t realize that there’s so many people. Me and Lauren got to see so many different organizations come together because they all have one cause,” Jasso said. “Some of them were like sisters, and they were praying the rosary while the march was going on. Some of them had music, and they were carrying statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Some of them were students. And then finally, we see the Notre Dame one, and we hop in, and then we got to experience the whole march. But it was just such a different perspective to see from the outside point of view that I was like, ‘wow like, this is something big that we are part of.’”
Right to Life’s March for Life team began planning for the trip in the early fall semester. Now that the trip is over, the club is focusing on other projects such as The Be Not Afraid Project, which was launched in November and aims to increase “support for pregnant and parenting students,” according to Nguyen.
Further, the club is working with a student mother to support her and her child while also working to increase awareness about Notre Dame’s Family Resource Center (FRC).
“There’s kind of a disconnect between the student body and … how many people know about the FRC, and so we're trying to bridge that gap and just get more outreach, just because a lot of people don't know about it,” Nguyen said.
