House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., delivered an address at the 2024 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., on Friday, explaining that the idea of God-given human value is intrinsic to American political thought going back to its founding.
Johnson also noted to the large crowd braving the snowy weather how he was an unplanned pregnancy, and exhorted them to be encouraged that the U.S. can develop a stronger culture of life.
“It was the great British statesman G.K. Chesterton who famously observed that America is the only nation in the world that was founded upon its creed,” Johnson said. “And he said it was listed with ‘theological lucidity’ in the Declaration of Independence.”
“What is that creed? What is it from our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration, that makes us who we are? We know the language so well. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ In other words, obvious that all men are created equal. Not born equal, created equal. That’s what the founders said.”
The worldview expounded in the Declaration of Independence, Johnson said, shows that the American system is predicated on the belief “that every single person has inestimable dignity and value, and your value’s not related in any way to the color of your skin, or what ZIP code you live in, how good you are in sports, where you went to high school.”
Such things are irrelevant, he explained, because everyone receives inherent value from their Creator. A national creed founded on such a principle is what has allowed the U.S. to become “the freest, most successful, most powerful, most benevolent nation in the history of the world,” he said.
Johnson went on to recount how his parents were teenagers when he was born as the result of an unexpected pregnancy in January 1972, exactly one year before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. He noted how his parents, though young, chose life, for which he said he was “profoundly grateful.”
Johnson also touted the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act and Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act, two pieces of legislation that recently passed in the GOP-led House of Representatives.
The first bill would require colleges to inform women of the accommodations available should they become pregnant, while the second aims to block the Biden administration’s efforts to bar pro-life pregnancy centers from access to federal welfare funds in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
Critics have claimed both bills are replete with “anti-choice” rhetoric, and they are expected to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate, though Johnson maintained during his speech that they are examples of efforts in Congress to help women and their unborn children.
“We’re passing these bills, and we’re marching today, because it takes a lot of work to convince people that every single human child, every unborn child, has a value that is too profound and precious to ignore,” he said. “And we have every reason to be optimistic, my friends, that we can change public opinion.”
He appealed to the examples of figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony, who he said were able to shift prevailing beliefs toward human dignity by adhering to the ideals laid out in the country’s national creed.
“They reminded their fellow Americans about our founding principles and, as Lincoln said in his famous first inaugural, ‘the better angels of our nature.’ We should do the same thing today.”
“My friends, let’s be encouraged,” he concluded. “Let’s press on in hope that we can join together and make this great difference. I believe that we can. We can stand with every woman, for every child, and we can truly build a culture that cherishes and protects life.”
Johnson’s speech during the nation’s largest pro-life rally comes amid reported frustration among some House conservatives who have been pushing for more abortion restrictions by tucking provisions into various appropriations bills, according to Politico.
During a press briefing earlier this week, Johnson admitted his conference “won’t get everything we want” amid a narrowly divided government, the outlet noted.
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