Every year, on or around August 10, there is a meeting in India, which describes itself as a public “celebration of life”. On the surface it seems to be only another peaceful march. Children wear posters, hymns are sung and slogans are sung. Posters read: “Let them be born” or “vote for the vocal”. But under the aesthetics of the community and spirituality there is a deeper story – one that raised more attention than it has received. The march condemns the right to choose access to abortion and the right to choose whether to marry, have children or use contraceptives to decide that all rights of election should be prescribed.
This year, the ‘National March for Life’ 2025 took place on August 9th in Bangalore. Looking back at the history of march, in Thrissur last March 2024, Kerala was a turning point in visibility and strategy and offers us the ability to think about how stories are constructed in today’s India.
Growth of the March for Life movement
The 2024 National March for LifeIn Thrissur, Kerala, was the most visible iteration of this annual movement so far. In the orderly framework of Christian institutions, what started with a modest turnout in 2022 quickly became a coordinated, multilingual campaign with several platform. The event organized by Charis India and supported by affiliated groups has increased steadily in scale, commitment and influence.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and its Catholic Connection Digital Initiative also played an important role in strengthening the range of March. Last year, bishops and delegates from all over the country were accompanied by international speakers and young organizers. Prayers were sung in six languages. A burial bell heralded in memory of “unborn people”, and people gathered to raise their voices into a growing “culture of death”. Medical students, school children and clergymen marched to shoulder – symbolically performed and protested.
March 2024 was both a protest and performance – the same parts of solemnity and spectacle. Songs like ‘from Womb to Tomb, we will protect life’ through the streets, while slogans like ‘Jeena Mera Haq Hai, Mummy Daddy Ko Kyun Shaq Hai’ and ‘I marched for the babies who did not march on T -shirts and tensioners. The pictures were powerful, deliberately and emotionally loaded.
Songs like ‘from Womb to Tomb, we will protect life’ through the streets, while slogans like ‘Jeena Mera Haq Hai, Mummy Daddy Ko Kyun Shaq Hai’ and ‘I marched for the babies who did not march on T -shirts and tensioners. The pictures on the day of the march and continuously on their social media are strategically, deliberately and emotionally loaded.
Beyond abortion: anti-choice agenda promoted
The news and symbols you use extend far beyond abortion. In their Instagram and YouTube, the digital content of IVF, contraception, masturbation, pornography, suicide and gender variety associated with the march includes. Masturbation and pornography are particularly mentioned and only for women. All of this is repeatedly framed as “unnatural” and “sinful” actions – both threats to personal purity and for the moral structure of society.
Roles published by organizers and supporters on their growing social media accounts are consistently humanized images of foetussen -a tactic to play with the psyche. Some fetuses are spoken, while graphic visuals are issued by abortion procedures. Small children and adolescents are increasingly presented in roles and contributions that speak of their “right to life” and thus tell and strengthen a feeling of “innocence” and “moral clarity”. The content is intended to appoint fear, guilt, grief and a feeling of betrayal. It shows a world in which reproductive decisions are not personal, but criminal.
Mix the language of Sare
However, the most alarming is the smooth introduction of a right -based language and an approach for your campaign. The language of care, dignity, science and empowerment is integrated – just to redirect it into a unique moral vision that denies the autonomy that seems to maintain it. Sentences like “Everyone has the right to life”, “enable them – let them born” and “march for the feet that cannot march for themselves” including the surface, but they are positioned to completely condemn the abortion – and if the birth alone guarantees justice, opportunities or security.
Mark for Life participants march to protest against abortion
Poster against “female fetizid” distort critical distinctions: Instead of addressing the structural drivers of gender -specific violence and discrimination, they combine all abortions against women.
And here the lines begin to blur. By embedding “morality” in Visuals and Slogans, the campaign does not position its anti-choice message as an ideology, but as a common sense-humanity-the autonomy of reproductive autonomy seems rather different than on purpose.
Complex topics to simplify
Real and urgent problems are undoubtedly displayed, even if as tactics: the need to support children with disabilities, remedy distorted sexual relationships and offer mothers better support for mental health. But their packaging and frames undermine the sufficient complexity with which they come. The pain of losing a deliberate child and the right not to be forced into unwanted parenting are two very different things. However, the two are presented in a single narrative of the victim – one that refuses the agency of women and throws all abortions as cruelty.
Source: Fii
Doctors are also brought into the wrinkle – not to ensure clarity, but to increase fear. Studies that combine abortion with cancer and depression are shared and used from the context to bring doubts about science instead of deepening understanding. The legitimacy is borrowed from white coats, while facts adapt to the ideology.
What is missing in this conversation is Nuance and Empathy for the entire range of experiences that cause someone to consider abortion. Of course, nobody should be forced to lose a child. However, the same applies to forced one. Reproductive autonomy is not about death – it’s about dignity.
It is interesting how none of the supporters, allies or activists expressly blame women, but the frame leaves little space for the choice. It builds a quiet consensus: the only right decision is the one that matches your values.
The missing shade
What is missing in this conversation is nuance and empathy for the entire range of intersectional, living experiences that make someone take into account abortion – or perhaps any decision that can be included in the life of an individual. Of course, nobody should be forced to lose a child. However, the same applies to forced one. Reproductive autonomy is not about death – it’s about dignity. For centuries, it has been the slightest marginalized by caste, classes, gender, religion and generation wines and who had least had over their own bodies. The right to decide must be protected – not moralized outside the range.
Everyone is for life. However, some use it as a cover to be anti-choice. Because the evaluation of life means trusting people to live it – and not to control how they start, wear or end it. The difference lies not who appreciates life, but decide what life means fully and entirely. Let us see with the March of 2025, which is only completed, which stories he will produce – and what it will leave behind will be left behind.
