Monday, April 26, 2004

Silent No More.

One group that was present at the recent "pro-choice" march, but not permitted to be a part of it by the organizers, was the post-abortion support group Silent No More. Kathryn Jean Lopez covered the march for National Review and talks about the group:

Quietly gathering around the march were women and men — and college students — organized under a group called Silent No More, which works with families suffering from abortion. Their permit request was denied after an effective effort from the supposedly freedom-loving sisters who organized the "March for Women's Lives." (Said Georgette Forney, president of NOEL, one of the groups that makes up the Silent No More coalition (the other being Priests for Life), "It's ironic that they are marching to protect women's right to choose and at the same time working to deny us our right to talk about the pain abortion caused us. We are the faces of the choice they promote.") So, Silent No More adjusted plans, remapped their routes, and had a little prayer chain around the march under another group's permit. No pictures of aborted fetuses from them. No yelling. No hating. They held signs that said "Women Deserve Better," "I Regret Lost Fatherhood," and "I Regret My Abortion." One sign was simply a happy face that said, "I Am Pro-life."

One of the women gathered with Silent No More, Lynn Hurley, told me that she had had an abortion in 1971 when she was in college. She knows the pain of abortion and says, "I hurt for the [women marching] who hurt, who have been through abortions themselves. They're probably in denial." She said, "I'm hoping women might see our signs and be touched by them."

Apparently nothing upsets "pro-choicers" more than the implication by those who made the choice that it was wrong and they regret it. Here's the testimony of Annie, posting to the "After-Abortion" weblog:

The March, in three words: "viciously, mercilessly abusive." The amount of verbal aggression and abuse hurled at me personally, by women and men, of all ages, for carrying the I REGRET MY ABORTION sign, well, I thought that I was ready for it.

I wasn't. Not even close.

I consider myself fairly far along on the "healing" and "public-appearances" scales. We stood, all 500 of us in the Silent No More Awareness groups, in total silence as planned, for over five hours, not replying or saying one word to anything that was said or done to us, and I do mean anything.

But nothing prepared me for literally mobs of livid people screaming the most hateful vicious snide things at me personally. We were spit on, and had an egg hurled at us from the marchers. There were two groups of Satanists. And the signs. Like the guy who held a handmade sign, "BABY KILLER" with an arrow pointed downward at himself. If not for the riot police, we would have been mobbed. There was that much viciousness. People broke through the riot police's invisible line just to come up in my face and hurl insulting words. There were not enough police to form a complete line, so they would run up to me, shout out their abuse, and run back before the policeman or woman got to stop him/her. And I said nothing to anyone, just held my sign.

I'll try to post at length as soon as I can. There's much more to tell. Including one woman who in the midst of the mass of marchers, came over to us, said, "What the hell am I doing out here?" and asked us to exchange her NARAL sign for one of ours. One conversion to the truth... that we know of...Will also do one of my regular columns and post that link too. The answer to one of Em's questions below: there were a TON of men there. Young to old, what seemed like thousands of husbands-dragged-along, even up to the ages of 85. Yes, they even had two double length busses for those elderly.

Related Links:

• After-Abortion Life after abortion: News, opinion and personal experience.
• I Was Pro-Choice, "A blog about abortion regrets."
• Resources for help after abortion, list of support groups and resources compiled by Silent No More.
• Project Rachel, Pregnancy Loss Outreach of the Catholic Church.
• Bunnie Diehl attended, or rather, observed the march, and posts uncensored photos along with critical commentary. [Go to her blog and scroll down].

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