On Friday (Jan. 19), more than 400 students, faculty, staff and graduate students from the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College and Saint Mary’s College will participate in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. The University consistently sends one of the largest single contingents to the annual event, now in its 51st year, through the support of the the Notre Dame Right to Life student club and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

“Year after year, the University of Notre Dame is proud to join in this joyful public witness to the inherent dignity of every human life,” said O. Carter Snead, director of the de Nicola Center. “It is so encouraging to see our amazing students joining the hundreds of thousands at the march to peacefully proclaim that our brothers and sisters in the womb deserve our love and respect and the equal protection of the law.”

“Thanks to the generosity of its friends and benefactors, Notre Dame is well represented at this important national event,” said Petra Farrell, the dCEC’s culture of life program manager. “In addition to the hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, we are delighted to support the participation of so many professors and staff, many of whom have attended this event for decades. Marching together, they underscore the University’s steadfast institutional commitment to proclaiming the dignity of all human life, at all stages and in all circumstances.”

The Notre Dame Right to Life student club was established in 1972, the year before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. Today, the club is the largest pro-life student group in the United States, as well as the largest student club at Notre Dame. Club president Kylie Gallegos, a Sorin Fellow at the de Nicola Center and a senior American studies and theology major from Stillwater, Oklahoma, will be featured as a student panelist at the 25th annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life on Saturday (Jan. 20).

Students, faculty and staff traveling to Washington for the march will celebrate a Mass for Life together in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at 9:30 a.m. Saturday (Jan. 20). The de Nicola Center will close out the weekend’s offerings with “Art for Life,” a guided tour at noon at the National Gallery of Art focusing on pieces that engage with themes evoking the culture of life.

The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture is the primary locus and engine of pro-life research, teaching, service and public witness at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to sponsoring the University’s annual participation in the March for Life, the dCEC administers the Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal, the nation’s preeminent lifetime achievement award for individuals whose efforts have significantly advanced a culture of life around the world. The dCEC also offers the annual Notre Dame Vita Institute, an intensive intellectual formation program for senior and emerging leaders working in all vocations of the pro-life movement around the globe. Director Carter Snead and the center’s public policy fellows regularly provide testimony and offer their expertise to legislators and policy makers on life issues, both at the domestic and international level.

Originally published by Kenneth Hallenius at ethicscenter.nd.edu on Jan. 18.