"Right to Life" demonstration, at White House and Capitol
Marchers on the fifth anniversary of Roe v. Wade carry hand-lettered signs reading "Abortion is murder / Save my life / I want to live", with a fetal photograph captioned "Life" and "Death", and "Abortion clinics breed death". The signs speak in the first person for the fetus and set the movement's key word, life, against death. The march itself is open, attributed advocacy; the glittering-generalities tag refers to the slogan wording, which states the movement's moral conclusion rather than a testable claim.
- Date
- January 23, 1978
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- Anti-abortion demonstrators at the annual March for Life, Washington, D.C.
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- Movement
- Regime
- Carter Administration
- Leader
- Jimmy Carter
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Health, Elections and party politics
- Event
- March for Life
- Techniques
- Glittering generalities
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (USN&WR photo collection; LoC: No known restrictions on publication)
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Text on the object
ABORTION IS MURDER SAVE MY LIFE I WANT TO LIVE [photo captions on the same sign:] Life Death ABORTION CLINICS BREED DEATH AMERICA PROTECTS EVERYTHING [illegible] BABIES
Crowd photo with dozens of hand-lettered signs; only the largest, clearest, unobstructed ones are transcribed. Several more are visible (e.g. 'Connecticut Right to Life', a cross symbol, a partly-legible sign about the unborn, a flag reading '...DOPT' with an adoption symbol) but are too small, angled, or hidden behind other signs to transcribe reliably, and are omitted rather than guessed. The 'AMERICA PROTECTS EVERYTHING...BABIES' sign has one word obscured by a sign in front of it.
