Rep. Mia Love (R., Utah) delivered a tearful tribute to her parents at the annual March for Life on Friday.
Love's parents left their native Haiti in 1976, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated state and federal abortion restrictions in Roe v. Wade. The couple already had two children, whom they left in the care of relatives while they established a foothold in America. Shortly after arriving they discovered that Love's mother was pregnant again. The second-term representative from Utah acknowledged that it "would've been easier for them to have an abortion," rather than keep her and struggle even more financially.
"That couple from Haiti could've made the choice to abort, but they didn't. They chose life," Love said to applause from the crowd. "They went and followed and fostered that life and the futures and the dreams that baby would bring. I'm certain that couple never would've thought that that child would become the first black female Republican ever elected to Congress."
Hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists and politicians gathered in Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, an annual event that has occurred since 1973. The march normally happens on the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but it was pushed back this year to accommodate the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
Trump has praised and plugged the march several times since taking office, going so far as to criticize the press for failing to cover the rally, which annually attracts hundreds of thousands of marchers. In his first national interview on Wednesday, he got into a brief dispute about media coverage of the march with ABC News anchor David Muir, though the network failed to include Trump's criticism in its transcript of the interview.
"You’re going to have a lot of people coming on Friday. And I will say this, and I didn't realize this. But I was told. You will have a very large crowd of people, pro-life people" Trump said. "And they say the press doesn't cover them."
Trump delivered a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May during the demonstration, but sent Vice President Mike Pence to address the crowd. Pence, who advanced several pro-life reforms—including a 20-week abortion ban—as governor of Indiana, told the crowd that "life is winning" at the state and national level with the ascendency of Republican majorities in Congress, the White House, and a record number of state governments.
"We've come to a historic moment in the cause of life and we must approach it with compassion for every American. Life is winning in America because of you," he said in front of the Washington monument.
Love urged pro-life activists to be welcoming and sympathetic to those with unplanned pregnancies. She said abortion is the denial of "the life and the potential" of the unborn.
"Every time we kill a child, all of us suffer. We lose a little of ourselves and a whole lot of our future. We strip a child from their God-given potential when we, as a society, accept abortion as health care," Love said. "My fellow Americans, we cannot accept what might have been. We won't know what might have been if we allow an organization to convince our pregnant women that they have no choice but to abort the life and the potential within them."