Here is one of the few eye-catching signs I saw at the March for Life. As a fairly experienced observer of anti-abortion events, I expected more of gory signs I've grown accustomed to seeing in which fetuses look like chewed-up stromboli. But the planners of the march apparently tamped down on the gross-out factor. I must confess I was sorely disappointed. [click on photo for larger version]

After the march, I made my way down to its nerve center at the downtown Hyatt Regency. I toured the March for Life's basement exhibition to get a sense of who its planners were. It was clear from the organizations represented there -- Human Life Alliance, Christendom College, Priest for Life -- how overwhelming Catholic this march was. Catholic anti-abortion groups have been around far longer than those dominated by evangelicals.

In my view, it was not until Francis Schaeffer came around that evangelicals involved themselves in the abortion debate. (The anti-Catholic tone of Schaeffer's writing, especially in his most famous book, "How Should We Then Live?" has been strangely overlooked). Their involvement resulted in ECT, or Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a right-wing alliance the Schaeffer disciple Chuck Colson helped broker, one which is still strong today. While evangelicals often assume the public face of the anti-abortion movement, largely because of the high profile of preacher-performers like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, Catholics still constitute its backbone.

Yet an overwhelming percentage of Catholics in the US now support stem-cell research, birth control and believe priests should be allowed to marry. And according to an August,2005 Pew poll, white Catholics are "deeply divided" over abortion. The anti-abortion movement's push to overturn Roe and whittle away at reproductive rights at the state level are deeply threatening to individual liberties, but shifting attitudes of Catholics on the movement's core issues presents serious challenges for its leadership.