Tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists, joined by white supremacists, demonstrated on Friday in Washington less than a week after the return to the White House of Donald Trump who sent them a message.
The 52nd edition of this annual “march for life” occurs the day after the grace granted by the new Republican president to 23 people who had participated in demonstrations against the voluntary pregnancy interruption and were continued under the previous administration of the Democrat Joe Biden.
On the road to North Carolina and California on Friday, Donald Trump addressed the crowd united by means of a recorded video message.
“During my second term, we will be fighting proudly again for families and life,” he promised them. “We will protect the historical achievements that we have obtained”.
“God be rented for President Trump,” said David Makovey, an activist from California, at the other end of the United States.
At least a hundred members of the American supremacist white and neo-Nazi group “Patriot Front” joined the rally, without however having the support of the organizers.
Military approach, brandishing American flags, religious and banner images claiming that “strong families make strong nations”, they paraded in columns on the fringes of the main demonstration.
At the foot of the Washington Monument, the famous obelisk of the American capital, their leader, Thomas Rousseau, 26, supervised by two men with the face hidden under a scarf, defended the “rehabilitation of the structure of the American family” among Their “patriotic principles”.
– “Change culture”-
A presence not of the taste of some of the demonstrators.
-“Pro-life, it's not pro-white,” annoyed Greg Stearns, a 36-year-old professor of philosophy, who came from North Carolina. “I can't stand seeing them here. It sends the bad message.”
In the procession that paraded from the White House to the Supreme Court and the Capitol, seat of the American Congress, signs “love little beings”, “We are not played out of God”, or “Life is our revolution “. Also some caps of the Trumpist Movement “Make America Great Again” but most of the participants did not arise a sign of political affiliation.
JD Vance, the American vice-president, and Mike Johnson, the Republican President of the House of Representatives, also spoke before the activists.
The organizers of this march explain that their objective is not only to change the laws, federal and state, “but also to change the culture to end up making abortion inconceivable”.
The “pro-life” movement, as its activists qualified, recorded a historic victory in June 2022, when the US Supreme Court canceled the “Roe V Wade” judgment and thus the federal guarantee of the right to abortion.
Donald Trump, who during his first mandate appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, often welcomes to having contributed to it.
Following this reversal of case law, many conservative states have prohibited or very severely limited the use of abortion. Today, almost one out of three between 18 and 44 years old lives in one of these states, according to the Politifact site.
Thousands of Americans have since forced to undertake painful and expensive trips to abort.
