Over the course of Rosie Gross' 70 years, she has seen abortion deemed unlawful and then made legal, leading her to passionate discussions and reflections of what constitutes life.

The Lancaster resident and former biology student said she learned from an early age that life is never at a standstill and is set in motion at the moment of conception.

"You're always moving through a phase of human development or human beingness," Gross said. "I can't be what I am at 70 if I wasn't what I was at one month in my mother's womb or even the moment I was conceived."

Gross will join more than 250 Lancaster County residents today at the 35th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., commemorating the date of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court, which made abortion legal. As many as 200,000 people have taken part in the march in past years.

The Lancaster delegation will meet with Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Pitts.

Five buses from the county will transport people to the march.

Four are being sponsored by Catholics Defending Life — three of which will leave from St. Philip the Apostle Church and one will depart from Elite Coach in Ephrata. The fifth, sponsored by WDAC radio station, will leave from Lancaster Bible College.

Gross, who attends St. Anthony's Catholic Church of Lancaster, said she has been going to the anti-abortion march for almost 25 years.

She said she can remember standing next to a college student from Iowa who had traveled 24 hours to get to the march and meeting an 82-year-old woman from Boston who said she hoped she could live until the day she could see abortion made illegal.

Gross' road to her anti-abortion stance dates back almost five decades, to 1959, when she graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., as a biology major.

She said one of the most influential days she spent in school was when she was a guest at Georgetown University Medical School for an afternoon.

Gross sat in on an embryology class where she saw jars of miscarried fetuses in various stages of development. The professor explained the stages of development and said everything that is needed for life is present at the moment of conception.

"At that class, on that day, the professor and every student in that class knew that (the fetuses) were human beings," Gross said. "There was no question about it. Everyone knew that life began at conception."

Today, Gross said, the term of "life" has been redefined, leading to the Supreme Court's 1973 decision on abortion.

Anne Marie DiCarlo, a board member of A Woman's Concern, said she has her own reasons for attending the March for Life.

The Lancaster resident has been going to the march for 15 years to meet other people who share her concerns. A few years ago, she started taking her two children to the march to expose them to anti-abortion ideals.

DiCarlo commented on a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that focuses on reproductive health. The study showed that abortions in the United States dropped to 1.2 million in 2005, the lowest level since 1974.

She said people are becoming educated on alternatives to abortion and are learning about the physical and psychological consequences of abortion.

"If we care about animals and we care about the planet, we ought to care about the most defenseless human beings, and those are the tiniest human beings," DiCarlo said.

E-mail: myoder@lnpnews.com