UPDATED: New York Times Has Ignored March for Life in Print 5 Years Running, Will It Break Into Print This Year?

Friday marks the 40th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., commemorating the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion. For five years running the New York Times has not printed a story about the annual march against abortion, which thousands of pro-life activists participate in every January.

The MRC's Rich Noyes writes that the march "is likely to pass with limited, if any, notice from a national news media which is hostile to the pro-life cause. While the abortion issue has divided Americans for the past four decades, journalists have consistently come down on the pro-abortion side of this debate."

The March for Life began with a rally on the National Mall at noon, but as of 3:45 p.m. on Friday, the Times had made no mention of it online. By contrast, the Times live-blogged Comedy Central host Jon Stewart's parodic "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear," held on the National Mall on October 2010, and ran an adoring story the next day.

UPDATE: Ashley Parker posted a story to the Times website 7:30 Friday evening; analysis later.

In fact, the only Times blog posts dealing with the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade celebrate the Supreme Court's controversial decision.

Linda Greenhouse, an online columnist who previously covered the Supreme Court for the Times, defended the decision in a Wednesday post, even though even many liberal scholars confess to the shoddy reasoning behind the decision: "And what will be Roe’s fate at 50? Until recently, I shared the sense of doom that pervades the abortion-rights community." Greenhouse marched in a rally for abortion rights in 1989 and tore into pro-life conservatives at a speech at Harvard in 2006, both while covering the Supreme Court for the paper: "And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."

Knee-jerk liberal editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal wrote a strange post Tuesday on what the Supreme Court's notorious 1973 abortion decision Roe v. Wade means...to the kids. (Has Rosenthal considered the irony of the millions of kids never born since Roe v. Wade?)

It’s the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Do your kids know what that means?....supporters of Roe should be aware that its opponents are not backing down. They might want to explain to their teenagers that Roe v  Wade was not about the best way to cross a river.

The Times is far more eager to publicize protests in support of liberal causes, no matter how puny. When four protesters marched in support of the Dream Act to grant amnesty to illegal immigrant students, the paper marked the occasion with a 780-word story on January 2, 2010. Just days ago the Times ran two stories on what turned out to be a march of 200 people across the Brooklyn Bridge in favor of strict gun control.