WASHINGTON — Anti-abortion protesters, including several hundred from Buffalo, filled

the National Mall on Friday to mourn the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision

legalizing abortion — and to celebrate the victories their movement had won in the

health care debate.

Some activists claimed victory because they were able to force changes in the health care

bills on both sides of Capitol Hill, while many others claimed victory because those health

care bills now appear to be dead.

"Any people from Massachusetts here today?" asked Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who addressed a

rally on the National Mall just before the annual March for Life. "Thank you, Massachusetts.

Thank you for helping us kill the anti-life bill."

King was referring to Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts won by Republican

Scott Brown. Brown's election gives Republicans the 41-seat minority they need to be able to

filibuster and thus kill the Democratic health plan in the 100-member Senate.

While the health care bills passed by the House and Senate both include added provisions

aimed at preventing federal funding to be used to pay for abortions, that was clearly not

enough for many of the protesters. Along with the typical signs equating abortion with murder,

there were many that said: "No to Obamacare."

And Bishop Edward Kmiec of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, at a morning Mass before the

march, said that the health care bill had been drawn up "in darkness" and that it aimed to

extend abortion coverage, until anti-abortion activists forced changes in it.

"You've made a difference," he said. "Attitudes are changing among people. There's some

kind of an awakening out there."

During his homily, Kmiec called abortion "a moral outrage."

Asked later if the fact that tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance was also a

moral outrage, Kmiec said: "I would say it's a moral concern" that does not rise to the same

level of urgency as the taking of an unborn life.

"We are looking for a wonderful kind of health care that's available to as many people as

possible," he said in the sermon. "But things that are done in darkness are not good."

Told of Kmiec's comments, Karen J. Nelson, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of

Western New York, said: "From the very beginning, we were told that if you're happy with your

health care, you can keep it. And abortion is a covered service in most American health plans.

So we were just asking that it remain a covered service."

Nelson said Planned Parenthood marked the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade — the

Supreme Court decision identifying a constitutional right to abortion — by providing

counseling, birth control and health care to women in need.

"We probably did more today to stop abortion than [the protesters in Washington] did,"

Nelson said.

The protesters, though, would disagree. Many said that the size of the crowd — which

organizers pegged at 200,000 — was proof that the movement was energized in its fight to

eventually make abortion illegal.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, "I think the sense of the opposition was that

we'd be complacent, that we'd go away," said Stasia Zoladz Vogel, the longtime leader of the

Buffalo Regional Right to Life Committee. "But we have not gone away. We're an established

force to be reckoned with."

Even abortion rights activists acknowledged that.

"We find ourselves wondering whether the leadership in Congress and the president we worked

so hard to elect in 2008 will ultimately stand up to the Catholic bishops and other extremists

bent on dismantling Roe and reject their demands for sweeping anti-abortion provisions in the

[health] reform bill," said Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women.

The March for Life contingent from Buffalo appeared to be larger than in some past years,

with the Diocese of Buffalo busing down about 300 people, the Right to Life Committee adding

another busload, and an untold number of others making the seven-hour drive to D.C. on their

own.

Moreover, the tone of the protesters from across the country and the signs they carried

seemed more subtle than in the past. Signs showing aborted fetuses were comparatively rare,

while simple printed signs carrying slogans like "Men regret lost fatherhood" were everywhere.

In that same vein, the Diocese of Buffalo is "trying to make clear that the tone of the

pro-life movement is compassionate, upbeat and positive," said Denis P. Coakley, the new

director of pro-life activities for the diocese.

Part of that effort has been the opening of the St. Gianna Beretta Molla Pregnancy Outreach

Center, which works with pregnant women to persuade them to not get abortions and to help them

get resources they need to support a newborn child.

Along with many "saves" — in which women decided against abortion — "we

actually had one conversion," said Cheryl Caline, volunteer coordinator and peer counselor at

the center. "And she named her daughter "Trinity.' "