I was having lunch with a Jesuit friend yesterday (a former reporter at my newspaper, in fact), who's in town for all the right-to-life activities surrounding the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

I didn't realize how many thousands of kids — mostly Catholic ones — pour into town for this gruesome anniversary each year. There's the Cardinal O'Connor Conference on Life at Georgetown University and the Students for Life conference across town at Catholic University. Those are just some of the many activities and gatherings going on around town.

Then there's the 8,000 students who show up at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception tonight for a procession of litanies, rosaries, vigil Masses and confessions going on all night long. A lot of these students will actually be sleeping on the floor and in the pews.

Then on Tuesday morning, the Verizon center downtown will be packed with 20,000 young Catholics — along with cardinals, bishops and a few hundred priests — for an annual Mass for Life. The Jesuits will have their own separate Mass at St. Alyosius Church.

Why is it these folks get minimal coverage whereas much smaller groups that show up here for their demonstrations and parades do?

Planned Parenthood clinic demonstration (courtesy of Christendom College)

In terms of the pro-life movement, it seems that these Catholic kids are doing much of the heavy lifting when it comes to showing up at demonstrations and generally making life uncomfortable for abortion clinic operators. In November, I got a press release from Christendom College in Front Royal describing how 25-50 students — and sometimes as many as 125 — give up their Saturday mornings to drive 90 minutes into Washington to pray outside of the Planned Parenthood clinic on 16th and L streets in downtown Washington. Paul Wilson, a sophomore quoted in the release, said their presence "helps us to see the 'real' faces of abortion; the pro-choice escorts, the women entering the building and even the people from the street who yell things from their cars as they drive by."

Sometimes people do more than yell. Yours truly was once part of a "life chain" in Houston standing by the sides of busy highways. At one point a car pulled up alongside and someone threw food at us.

If I were one of these students, I'd be tempted to stay in my dorm and work on homework instead.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times