Today marks the 44th annual March for Life–a march that has a specific reason to exist and has continued, growing more and more with each passing year.

Last week, we witnessed a remarkable gathering of individuals marching on Washington, D.C.–a “Woman’s March” it was called. But the focus of the march was blurred–asking a dozen people what they were marching for, I?received a dozen different answers. It was a tremendous turnout but to a march with no specific cause or ideal.

Today’s March for Life has one focus–one ideal–to promote the saving of millions of human lives that are snuffed out in the United States and around the world each year. Many of these lives are forfeited under the guise of “choice” and “women’s rights to healthcare.” The majority of these lives have nothing to do with “healthcare.” They do have to do with “choice”–the choice to take a life or not.

The first March for Life was held on Jan. 22, 1974, just one year after the passage of Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion in the United States. Since that time, there have been over 50 million babies killed.

Note, I use the word baby–not “fetus” or “cell tissue” because science has shown they are, indeed, babies. They are individual, living human beings with DNA separate from their mother. Their mother’s womb simply provides a safe place for the new life to grow until it can sustain itself.

I was amazed to hear that of those more than 50 million, nearly 18 million of those babies were from African American mothers. Statistics show that almost one in every two pregnancies in the African American community end in abortion, compared to one in six in Caucasian pregnancies. The numbers are mind boggling.

While it is difficult to grasp exactly how many lives that is–my pastor shared a comparison that gave visual assistance. I share it with you to allow you to perhaps grasp the magnitude of the loss of life.

If one was to take all of the population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia–do you have the visual? Now wipe them out–eliminate all the people in those cities. That equals just the number of African American babies lost to abortion since 1973.

Imagine what those people could have accomplished in their lifetimes had they been given the chance to live. Perhaps we would have a cure for cancer; perhaps we would have found multiple sources of alternative energy; perhaps we would have seen so many things created, written, sung, painted….the list is endless.

It is for those lost possibilities and the future losses to come that hundreds of thousands will march in Washington this day–The March for Life. The March for Life–a specific reason, a specific goal to stop the deliberate taking of human lives. Because lives are what are being lost; not just a batch of cells or a ‘growth’ the mother wants to be rid of.

Not much will be shown of this March for Life in the main stream media–but that makes it no less important.