The anti-abortion-rights March for Life rally has occurred every January since 1974—the year after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v. Wade established the right to abortion. The first march, according to organizers, ended on the western steps of the U.S. Capitol, and attracted a crowd of roughly twenty thousand. This year, the group had reportedly hoped that their rally on Friday would draw numbers to compete with last weekend’s Women’s March on Washington, which attracted at least half a million protesters. Instead, attendance at the March for Life was estimated in the thousands—a fairly typical turnout, as some attendees told the Washington Post. The Washington, D.C., Metro recorded normal ridership for a Friday. The rally did not ripple the daily rhythms of the city—and, just as Donald Trump has painted a picture of liberal journalists hell-bent on minimizing the size of his Inauguration Day crowd, some conservatives are blaming the media.

“When you looked at how much the networks covered the Women’s March even before it happened, they served as press agents for the Women’s March, and turned around and said, ‘Look at how successful this was, look how many people attended,’ ” Dan Gainor, the vice-president of the conservative Media Research Center, complained to the Los Angeles Times. “That seems a tad unfair.” Newt Gingrich went further. The lack of attention paid to the march, he argued Friday night on Fox News, proved the point of the Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who described the media as an “opposition party.” Gingrich went on, “Left-wing, pro-abortion, anti-conservative news media are going to do everything they can to hide from the reality that there are vastly more Americans who care about life.”

In reality, Gingrich’s statement is but another “alternative fact.” The most recent Pew Research Center polling, conducted in October, suggests that support for legal abortion is at its highest point since 1995, with fifty-nine per cent of Americans favoring access to the procedure in all or most cases. Only fifteen per cent believe that abortion should be outlawed altogether. And yet, Vice-President Mike Pence was not incorrect when, in a speech to the crowd on the Mall on Friday, he called the protest “the best day I’ve ever seen for the March for Life.” Pence’s very presence at the march proves his point. In the past, Republican Presidents have signalled their support—Ronald Reagan sent a video message in 1988, and George W. Bush called into the rally in 2008—but Trump is the first to send emissaries. Pence, who attended the march with the Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, is the highest-ranking member of government ever to address the event in person. Abortion opponents’ numbers may be gradually waning, but they are winning all the same.

Few could have predicted the new President’s enthusiastic embrace of the anti-abortion cause. In a 1999 interview, Trump described himself as “very pro-choice”; in 2016, he refused to answer the Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s questioning about whether he has ever paid for a woman to have an abortion. He has also openly acknowledged that he was once convinced to go along with a partner’s desire to keep a surprise pregnancy. (Many have speculated that he’s talking about the conception of his daughter Tiffany.) But, campaigning for the Republican nomination, Trump swung hard in the other direction. He famously expressed the view that if abortion is outlawed, women who seek it deserve “some form of punishment,” then disavowed it after learning that he had deviated from conservative orthodoxy. At the final Presidential debate, he accused Hillary Clinton of advocating procedures that “take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb,” a flagrant mischaracterization of late-term abortion. And, of course, in Mike Pence, he has enlisted an anti-abortion zealot, who as governor of Indiana signed a raft of legislation to restrict the procedure, and who is one of the G.O.P.’s most vocal proponents of defunding Planned Parenthood.

The theme of Pence’s speech on Friday was that “Life is winning again in America.” The Vice-President described Trump as a man “in the promise-keeping business,” and enumerated the commitments to abortion opponents that the new Administration has made so far. He reminded the crowd that one of Trump’s first acts in office was to reinstate and expand the global abortion gag rule, which will prevent the flow of U.S. aid to international organizations that so much as mention the procedure, and vowed that he and Trump will “work with the Congress to end taxpayer funding of abortion and of abortion providers.” In fact, the use of public dollars for such purposes has been banned under the Hyde Amendment, a federal budget provision, since 1976 (the current law contains exceptions for rape and incest, and cases where the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman). Trump promised on the campaign trail that, if elected, he would permanently enshrine the Hyde Amendment in law, and the House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday that would make him as good as his word—if it survives Senate Democrats’ expected efforts to filibuster. The House is also considering a bill that would constitute a total, nationwide ban on abortion, though it seems unlikely to pass both chambers.

Finally, Pence reminded marchers that, this coming week, Trump will announce his first nominee to the Supreme Court, and promised that the choice will fall “in the tradition of the late and great Justice Antonin Scalia.” Scalia’s seat has been vacant since his death, almost a year ago, due to Republicans unprecedented refusal to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. Trump has reportedly narrowed his shortlist to three judges, all staunch conservatives. One, Judge William Pryor, of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has referred to Roe v. Wade as “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.”

If a new Justice should spell the end of Roe, the demonstrators’ central demand would be met. As one protester said to Slate’s Christina Cauterucci, “Hopefully, this will be the last march we have to have.” Pence projected a more modest confidence, urging his listeners to conduct themselves “with generosity, not judgment.” With that advice in mind, he said, “I believe that we will continue to win the hearts and minds of the rising generation.” The giant crowds that turned out at the Women’s March are just one suggestion that the hearts and minds of Americans are elsewhere. A Defund Plan Parenthood rally planned for February 11th has already prompted a broad mobilization of activists who are determined to defend women’s right to choose. But the marchers on Friday can afford to lose that battle. Where it matters most, they have already won.