The meet-up brings together some of the nontraditional pro-life groups at the march—that is, the nonconservative and nonreligious organizations—to hear a slate of speeches, many of them from nonreligious or left-leaning pro-life leaders. But Rehumanize International’s communications director, Herb Geraghty, takes care to explain that these aren’t meant to be counterprogramming efforts: “When we host these meet-ups, we’re not protesting the March for Life,” he says. He describes these events and the presentations given at them as supplementary to the main rally.

At the March for Life, and in the pro-life movement generally, Christianity is abundant; at this year’s March for Life Expo, for example, held the day before the march, a majority of the tables set up at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C., belonged to churches or Christian groups. Conservatism, too, runs strong in the pro-life movement, and in recent years, so has support for Donald Trump’s administration: In 2017, Vice President Mike Pence became the first sitting vice president to address the March for Life rally (held annually just before the march begins), and last year President Trump became the first sitting president to do so when he appeared at the event via live-stream. (This year, Pence spoke at both the rally itself and a dinner following.)

Read more: Abortion in American history

But despite what the popular narrative might suggest—that the pro-life side of the abortion debate is conservative and the pro-choice side is liberal, and the two sides don’t like each other—secular and left-leaning pro-lifers I spoke with said they felt welcome at the March for Life, and that most of the time they feel welcome in the pro-life movement in general, too.

They do, of course, know they’re outnumbered. While I spoke with one marcher with a Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) sign, a stranger bedecked in pro-life memorabilia approached him, exclaimed, “You’re a Democrat? Hallelujah!” and demanded a photo of him holding his sign.

“We’re kind of like the counterculture within the movement,” laughed Jongeun Lee, 32, another protester with the DFLA.

But as Aimee Murphy, the executive director of Rehumanize International, explained to me, groups that espouse the consistent-life ethic are the black sheep at just about any rally or protest they attend—and they’re used to it. “We go to anti-war marches, to immigrant- and refugee-rights events like the ones this past summer, and we’re like, ‘Okay, we’re here in support of the mission of this march,’” she says. “There’ll be a group [nearby] that advocates for abortion, or advocates for the right to suicide, and we’re just like, ‘Eh, well. We have common ground on this issue.’”

“Movements are going to be fought with people coming together on one issue and having differences in other places,” Murphy added. “We come together where we can.”