“Not only are the young people there — elementary grade kids, high school kids, college kids — but they’re there with a vibrancy, just an excitement about them being part of a movement that is about saving innocent human life.”

President Obama and another massive turnout of pro-life Americans gained attention in Washington as the country passed the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion.

The president reaffirmed his commitment to abortion rights, even urging continued efforts to protect those rights for “our daughters.” The White House issued his statement Jan. 22, the date in 1973 on which the Supreme Court issued companion decisions — Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — that struck down all state abortion restrictions and effectively legalized the procedure for any reason throughout pregnancy.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of pro-lifers joined together Jan. 23 for the annual March for Life that followed a weekend of pro-life events in the Washington area. The march drew its usually immense crowd in spite of intermittent rain and a temperature in the mid-30s. Young people, especially teenagers, dominated the march.

“Every year the crowd gets younger,” said Barrett Duke, vice president of public policy for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Duke joined in the march, which stretched along the National Mall to the Supreme Court.

“There was probably only one gray head for every 40 or 50, maybe more, this year,” said Duke, whose first March for Life came in 2004. “I’ve watched that change every year I’ve been in the marches, and this year was utterly astonishing to me. Not only are the young people there — elementary grade kids, high school kids, college kids — but they’re there with a vibrancy, just an excitement about them being part of a movement that is about saving innocent human life. They’re singing; they’re chanting; they’re doing calls back and forth to each other. One of them was: ‘I love babies, yes I do, I love babies, how ’bout you?'”

He said, “I saw what almost certainly could be described as an emerging pro-life culture among young people in this country.”

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on Baptist Press—however, the link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]