US President Donald Trump on Friday addressed the country’s biggest annual anti-abortion rally as members of the Senate sat in judgment just blocks away at his impeachment trial.

During a rally at the “March for Life” on the National Mall, President Trump said to the thousands of anti-abortion campaigners,”Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House”.

Advertisement

“When it comes to abortion,” the Republican president said, “Democrats have embraced the most radical and extreme positions”, the president added.

The US leader seeking to shore up the Christian evangelical support he’ll need for re-election in November, is the first president to address the annual anti-abortion event in person.

“They are coming after me because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those who have no voice,” he told the cheering crowd. “And we will win because we know how to win”, Trump said.

The seven Democratic impeachment “managers” are to make their final arguments at Trump’s impeachment trial on Friday.

On December 18, President Trump was formally impeached in a historic vote in the House of Representatives.

In an initial response to the president’s being charged, written by Cipollone and Sekulow, the defense said that the articles of impeachment — passed by the majority-Democrat House of Representatives — “are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.”

“President Trump has governed as the most pro-life president in history,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of the anti-abortion campaign group Susan B. Anthony List.

The “March for Life,” which Trump has addressed by video message the last two years, is organized annually on or near the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Roe v Wade case which legalized the procedure nationwide on January 22, 1973.

Those attending the “March for Life,” including many teenagers who arrived on buses chartered by their local churches in different parts of the country, later marched to the Supreme Court to call for Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

Since taking office in 2017, Trump has strengthened the Supreme Court’s 5-4 conservative majority, naming two justices who oppose abortion — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — and galvanizing abortion opponents.

Conservative-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts is seen as the potential swing vote if the constitutionality of abortion eventually comes before the court.

The first big Supreme Court test of that anti-abortion push will come in March, when the court examines a Louisiana law whose restrictions on abortion are similar to a Texas law struck down nearly four years ago.

As it does each year, the march began at the National Mall and was to end at the Supreme Court near the Capitol building, where senators are sitting as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial.

In September, the impeachment inquiry, which Nancy Pelosi initiated over a complaint by an anonymous whistleblower, is looking into White House’s alleged efforts to withhold military aid to have Ukraine investigate a Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden.

Democrats are hoping their arguments will at least persuade some Republicans, who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, to support their call to issue subpoenas next week for four top current and former Trump aides to testify, and for internal White House records about the Ukraine affair.

(With inputs from agency)