Pro-Life slogans echoed through the streets as hundreds of enthusiastic pro-lifers marched through New York City’s Manhattan during the annual Gift of Life Walk held on Tuesday, March 25th.
A Wake-up Call for a Pro-abortion State
Vans and a busload of volunteers from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and students from the St. Louis de Montfort Academy bolstered the ranks of pro-lifers with a large band comprised of bagpipers, drummers and brass.
The piercing sound of the pipes and the booming echo of the drums ensured that the pro-life demonstration received maximum attention from pedestrians while others looked down from apartments.
Order Today: Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need to Go
Between patriotic songs and hymns to Our Lady, members of the American TFP’s Holy Choirs of Angels Corps marching band chanted slogans calling on New York’s inhabitants to stand up for the unborn and reject abortion. One slogan proclaimed “Pray and act to end the sin of abortion!” While another said “New York! New York! Stand up for the God-given right to life!”
New York State has become increasingly anti-life, with a hostile state government that allows abortion up to birth and persecutes pregnancy centers
Despite persecution, the pro-life movement’s perseverance in New York is paying off. This year saw the close of the only Planned Parenthood facility in Manhattan.
Freed Pro-Lifers and No Counter-Protesters
The 2025 Gift of Life Walk was different from previous years. For example, this year, pro-lifers who had been jailed for protesting at an abortion clinic under the FACE Act, and released by the Trump administration, showed up. One of them spoke on a stage beforehand encouraging the marchers.
Why America Must Reject Isolationism and Its Dangers
Another change from last year’s march was the lack of an organized counter-protest. Last year, a large and angry pro-abortion crowd tried to drown out the speeches. Several of them were arrested.
Vocal Support…and Anger
Many New Yorkers paused to watch and film the hundreds of marchers passing through their neighborhoods. People waved, gave thumbs up or other gestures of support. A truck driver leaned out of his window and made a Sign of the Cross as he gazed at the statue of Our Lady of Fatima carried on the shoulders of the TFP men. At the end of the pro-life walk, a man approached the TFP volunteers and said he had not been able to make the beginning of the event because of work. However, as the TFP’s marching band passed by his office, he got all of his coworkers to come and watch the pro-lifers pass by with the TFP band. He added, “I love what TFP does!”
Some pedestrians in favor of abortion shouted Planned Parenthood talking points like “You’re all men!” (Disregarding the numerous women marching alongside us.) Others offered less intellectual responses, vulgar gestures or curses.
This year, the Gift of Life Walk fell on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Our Blessed Mother. During the walk, the TFP volunteers led the crowd in honoring Our Lady on her feast with “Viva Maria Sanctissima!”
May Mary Most Holy, Mother of God, intercede for the pro-life movement in its battle to end the sin of abortion.