Jan 18, 2017 3 min read

You can call it very late at night or very early in the morning, but Tom Raymond will be boarding a bus Jan. 27 when most of us will be reveling in deep, REM sleep.

Raymond, the deacon administrator for Catholic churches in Greene County, will be serving as the captain of a bus taking parishioners to the annual anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C. Typically timed for the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states, it is expected to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 people.

And, regardless of the weather in the nation’s capital that day, the marchers could well feel like they have the wind at their backs. Abortion opponents will have a friendly Congress in their corner, a president who has expressed sympathy for their views, and the likelihood of a continued conservative majority on the Supreme Court, since President-elect Donald Trump will be naming a replacement for Antonin Scalia, the right-leaning Supreme Court justice who died unexpectedly almost one year ago.

“We’re very hopeful we can make inroads on this issue,” Raymond said.

Mary Lou Gartner, a Penn Hills resident and the Southwestern Pennsylvania coordinator for the March for Life, said she is optimistic that Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress would also do away with mandates that employers cover certain kinds of birth control in their health care plans, and that Planned Parenthood is defunded.

“If you defund Planned Parenthood, you’re going to see a drop in the number of abortions,” Gartner said. “They’re in the business of providing abortions.”

A longtime anti-abortion activist, Gartner attended the first March for Life in 1974. She will not be attending the march this year, but will be watching television coverage of it on EWTN, the Catholic television network that is available through cable and satellite providers and online.

“There’s a lot of cameraderie on the marches,” Gartner said.

U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, whose 18th congressional district encompasses much of Washington and Greene counties, will be among the state lawmakers hosting a reception for participants in the march. The evening before the march, a prayer vigil will be held at the National Basilica and the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., will host a youth rally and mass at 7:30 a.m. on the day of the march at the Verizon Center sports arena. The march itself will start at noon on the grounds of the Washington Monument.

Dee Coyle, a Washington resident who will be attending the march, said that she is “hopeful.”

“We don’t want to keep marching forever,” Coyle said.

In Washington County, buses will be leaving from St. Patrick Catholic Church in Canonsburg; St. Benedict the Abbot Church in McMurray; the South Hills Bible Chapel, also in McMurray, and Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Meadow Lands. In Greene County, buses will be leaving from St. Hugh Church in Carmichaels and St. Ann Church in Waynesburg. Buses will also be leaving from churches in communities adjacent to Washington and Greene counties, such as Brownsville, Bridgeville, Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair.