This Friday, hundreds of thousands of pro-life women and men will march on Washington, D.C., to protest the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and to call for civil rights protections for the preborn.

The women who will be marching this Friday were explicitly not welcome at the “Women’s March” last Saturday.

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The narrative spun by the top organizers of the “Women’s March” was that in order to be a “feminist” or to care about women’s rights, you must unequivocally back abortion-on-demand. It shouldn’t surprise us – out of the top four financial backers of the march, three were pro-abortion advocacy groups: Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

The event’s “exclusive premier sponsor” was none other than the nation’s leading abortion chain, Planned Parenthood.

But disinvited pro-life women are in good company: the original feminists would not have been welcome at the Women’s March, either. Rejected by abortion groups and conveniently forgotten by many in legacy media is the fact that, from the beginning, being pro-life has been a proud part of feminism.

Fact: Nearly 13,000 abortions are committed every year in the U.S. on viable, fully developed children. https://t.co/Sg6DbChUxm — Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) October 24, 2016

In fact, the feminist movement was founded by pro-life women who saw abortion as an abuse against both children and women.

Women’s suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Victoria Woodhull, the first female candidate for president, decried abortion as an “evil” act and called it “murder.”

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree, called abortion a “gross perversion and destruction of motherhood.”

Many women don't know the American suffragist and women's rights activist, Susan B. Anthony, was fiercely pro-life. The exclusion of pro-life women from the women’s march shows today’s cultural ignorance of the original feminists’ views of abortion.

Ignorance of the original feminists’ pro-life views is compounded by a profound ignorance of what abortion actually is: the dismembering, poisoning, or starving to death of children with beating hearts at just three and a half weeks post fertilization.

The abortion rights movement has sold abortion to women as a solution to their problems, callously pitting mothers against their own children and against their most inherent instincts.

Women were promised liberation, but instead, abortion only brought death, exploitation, and increased sexual objectification to women. Despite this, the abortion industry continues to sell the myth that abortion is female empowerment, and as evidenced by the Women’s March, their lies are still deeply entrenched in our culture.

The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, goes to great lengths to make abortion seem synonymous with women’s health care — a public relations strategy geared at securing an ever-increasing share of taxpayer funds (the corporation received over $550 million taxpayer dollars last year alone) while building political power.

When campaigning, now-President Trump pledged to defund the group. Planned Parenthood has said without taxpayer funds, women would lose access to mammograms and that the group is essential to providing prenatal care for women.

These are just a few of the claims that Live Action has debunked: Planned Parenthood provides no mammograms, virtually no prenatal care, yet commits over 30 percent of abortions annually.

Read this important op-ed (coauthored by a relative of S.B.Anthony) & share our rich pro-life feminist history. https://t.co/phiuW0wxCC — Feminists for Life (@Feminists4Life) January 19, 2017

From the view of the pro-life feminist, the cognitive dissonance is striking: how could an organization that kills over 320,000 preborn children a year ever be associated with anything remotely related to health care?

The March for Life, founded by a woman (Nellie Gray), led by a woman (Jeanne Mancini), and marched by hundreds of thousands of women (and men) is not only in its 44th year, but has grown dramatically over that time. It is the largest, longest-running human rights march in American history.

On January 27th, pro-life feminists will proudly march, fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable.

Unlike abortion advocates, pro-life feminists believe it is barbaric to kill our children to solve a problem or pursue a dream. We also invite men to join our ranks and we will march shoulder to shoulder with them, because the fight for life isn’t just a “women’s issue” — it’s a human rights issue.

Through our peaceful public witness to human dignity, we honor the tradition of the brave, first feminists who demanded something better for women and their children.

Lila Rose is a national leader in the pro-life movement. She is the founder and president of Live Action, a non-profit human rights organization, dedicated to ending abortion and protecting the right to life. Connect with Rose on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

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