March for Life Attendees Are Getting Measles

Anti-abortion demonstrators at the March for Life may have helped spread a potentially fatal disease.

The march and concert, held on January 23 in Washington, D.C., draw thousands to the National Mall each year. This time, though, the D.C. Department of Health says that multiple cases of measles have been reported following the event.

“DC Health was notified of multiple confirmed cases of measles whose carriers visited multiple locations in the District while contagious,” the department said in a press release Sunday. “DC Health is informing people who were at these locations that they may have been exposed.”

D.C. health officials said that the disease could have easily spread at major transit points, including Ronald Reagan National Airport and Union Station. Infected people also visited Catholic University of America and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The march is a big event for religious conservatives, this year attracting politicians such as Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Republican Representative Chris Smith. Many on the right oppose vaccination, with some citing religious reasons, making the march a possible hotbed of measles infections. The two major outbreaks in the U.S. right now are in South Carolina, which is facing the largest outbreak in the U.S. since 2000, and Texas, where an ICE family detention center had to go on lockdown last week.

Both of these states are Republican-run and home to countless anti-vaxxers. The March for Life gathers people from right-wing areas all over America in one city, and it’s not shocking that an outbreak was the result. What is shocking is how much the Republicans in power right now are still undermining a return to widespread vaccination, leaving other public officials begging people to get vaccinated.