WASHINGTON – The multitude of anti-abortion activists on the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life are confronting a different Washington from their last visit.

The crowd cheered last year when President Donald Trump – whom anti-abortion leaders call the most pro-life president in history – became the first commander in chief to address the rally through a live video feed.

They’re eagerly waiting to see whether Trump’s two Supreme Court appointees will side with them in the battle over how abortion services can be legally restricted.

Across from the court, where activists will end their march, the new Democratic House majority vows to block Trump actions affecting birth control access and abortion services.

“We are systematically going to dismantle these restrictions on women’s health care,” Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., co-leader of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said at a news conference Tuesday where one caucus member donned pink boxing gloves. “So here we go!”

Although caucus members boast that their ranks are the biggest in the group’s history, their reach is limited. Legislation passed by House Democrats can be stopped by the Senate's Republican majority or by Trump.

But Democrats can block Republicans from trying again to pass legislation that would prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Medicaid funds. And they can go after executive branch actions.

“We pledge to use every legislative and oversight tool in our power to investigate the Trump administration’s attack on women,” said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif. She said the caucus is fired up by the record-breaking number of women elected to the House in November along with "our male supporters."

March for Life president Jeanne Mancini conceded that things in Washington have “changed quite a bit” over the last 12 months.

“Last year we could lean in and expect people to be really courageous on the Hill on our issues and we had all sorts of champions,” she said. “This year, we’re in the place of fighting for the status quo.”

Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the political arm of March for Life, notes the last time Democrats controlled the House about 40 Democrats described themselves as "pro-life," he said. Now, there's almost none.

“A lot of what we’re trying to do is buck up the Senate and buck up the president,” McClusky said. If Democrats follow through on a promise to rid annual spending bills of long-standing language banning most federal abortion funding, the budget bill should be vetoed, he said.

McClusky wants the Senate to step up the pace of confirming Trump’s judicial appointments. Complaining that the Senate moves “at a snail’s pace,” McClusky pointed out that senators rarely schedule legislative work on Mondays and Fridays.

Trump promised during the 2016 election to nominate judges who would help overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights decision in 1973. (The March for Life is held around the anniversary of that decision.)

To the disappointment of conservative activists, the Supreme Court refused in December to consider efforts by Republican-led states to defund Planned Parenthood.

One of Trump’s appointments – Brett Kavanaugh – sided with the majority. The other – Neil Gorsuch – joined Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in dissenting.

The court could announce soon whether it will review the constitutionality of an Indiana law signed by Mike Pence when he was governor to outlaw abortions sought because of gender, race or disability. (Pence, Trump’s vice president and a longtime champion of the annual march, will speak at the group's dinner Friday.)

Also tied up in the federal courts is a Trump administration move to let employers with moral objections opt out of an Affordable Care Act requirement that insurance plans cover birth control at no charge. A judge blocked the change from going into effect Monday while a challenge from Democratic attorneys general proceeds.

The administration is close to finalizing changes to the federal grant program that supports family planning services to low-income women. The proposed changes would effectively disqualify Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from participating and would greatly limit the ability of health care providers to provide counseling and referrals for abortions, said Alina Salganicoff, an expert on women’s health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

Another change in the works would require insurance companies that offer plans through the health exchanges covered by the Affordable Care Act to bill separately the portion of a premium that covers most abortion services.

More than 200 lawmakers, led by DeGette, told the administration this month that the change would impose “unnecessary and onerous burdens” on insurers and patients.

DeGette told USA TODAY she will use her chairmanship of a House oversight panel with jurisdiction over health issues to hold “science-based hearings on the Trump administration’s restrictions on birth control and family planning.”

“We’re going to go after all of them,” she said of the administration’s proposals.

Salganicoff said such hearings could raise the visibility of the issues.

"There's so much going on that things don't really rise to the level of attention until there are hearings," she said. “It slows the cogs from moving forward.”

The cogs have been churning in states where hundreds of actions have been taken in the past eight years to either restrict abortion services or support abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights think tank. Last year was the first time in recent years that steps protecting reproductive rights outnumbered abortion restrictions.

That could continue because of the gains Democrats made in state capitals in November. But the elections also accelerated a trend toward one-party rule in states, which will affect both sides of the policy debate.

"We're going to see access really be very different from state to state across the country," Salganicoff said. "Where you live is going to really matter in terms of not only whether you can get abortion access but whether you can get contraceptive access."

Contributing: Christal Hayes, USA TODAY.

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