Fresh off winning the national college football championship, University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh championed the right to life in the nation’s capital on Friday. Speaking before thousands of marchers gathered for the annual “March for Life” rally on the National Mall, Harbaugh introduced former NFL tight end Benjamin Watson.
“It’s a great example that you’re setting. It’s testimony for the sanctity of life,” Harbaugh said to demonstrators crowded in the snow. “It’s a great day for a March! It’s a great day. This is football weather!”
Harbaugh gave the podium to Watson, who encouraged pro-lifers to advocate for unborn children in “the new fight for life” following the milestone Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“Roe is done,” Watson said, “but we still live in a culture that knows not how to care for life.”
“Roe is done,” Watson added, “but abortion is still legal and thriving in too much of America.”
This year’s gathering marks the second annual March for Life since the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the 1973 precedent claiming a constitutional right to kill preborn children. An analysis from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics last fall found about 32,000 babies have been saved in states that implemented the strictest abortion bans since the reversal of Roe in 2022.
Harbaugh expanded on his commitment to life in an interview on the sidelines of the rally.
“There’s no right without the right to be born,” Harbaugh said. “No other rights matter if you don’t have the right to be born.”
Harbaugh also spoke about his team’s religious revival after 70 players were baptized into Christianity this season.
“There’s a spiritual mission to our team,” Harbaugh said, “and I’m inspired by them.”
The head football coach made headlines in summer 2022 just one month after the Dobbs decision when he pledged to raise any babies his staff or players couldn’t.
“I’ve told [them] the same thing I tell my kids, the boys, the girls, same thing I tell our players, our staff members,” Harbaugh said. “I encourage them if they have a pregnancy that wasn’t planned, to go through with it, go through with it. Let that unborn child be born. And if at that time, you don’t feel like you can care for it, you don’t have the means or the wherewithal, then Sarah and I will take that baby.”
