US president George Bush voiced support for anti-abortion demonstrators attending this year’s March for Life rally.
The protests mark the 35-year anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court’s Roe versus Wade ruling that a woman has a constitutional right to abort an unwanted pregnancy.
“Thirty-five years ago today the United States Supreme Court declared and decided that under the law an unborn child is not considered a person, but we know many things about the unborn,” said Mr Bush, who hosted about 200 of the demonstrators in the East Room of the White House for coffee and doughnuts.
In remarks broadcast to other demonstrators later, Mr Bush said that biology confirmed that from the start, each unborn child was a separate individual with his or her own genetic code.