On April 25, poor-choice groups staged what was intended to be a massive demonstration in support of abortion at the National Mall in D.C. In response, a number of post-abortive women turned out to witness to the truth that abortion hurts women. The Silent No More Awareness campaign included about 35-40 post-abortive women holding signs saying, “I Regret My Abortion,” and some men holding signs saying “I Regret Lost Fatherhood.” Annie, who was in the position of holding one of the first “I Regret My Abortion” signs seen by the marchers, wrote that “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 . . . People broke through the riot police’s invisible line just to come up in my face and hurl insulting words.”
But Annie also described how one woman, seeing Annie in tears as she held her sign, looked at her and silently mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” A college-age marcher reached out to touch her arm and say, “I’m so sorry” after Annie told him of her regret at aborting her unborn daughter 25 years ago. Another woman called out to Annie, “I regret my abortion too!” before breaking past the riot police to hug and cry with her, then disappearing again into the crowd. Other pro-life demonstrators described seeing several women among the marchers begin to weep as they saw the sign. Janet Morana of Priests for Life, a co-sponsor of the Silent No More campaign, said that a woman came up to their group from among the marchers with a Planned Parenthood sign that read “Stand Up for Choice.” “She said ‘I can’t hold this sign and march with them anymore,'” Morana said. “She bent the Planned Parenthood sign . . . and handed it to me. She then told me she had lost a child to ‘crib death’ I consoled her and she put her arms around me and sobbed. She left proudly, holding the pro-life sign.” Silent No More leaders said that about 500 people came, including members of Women Deserve Better, Feminists for Life, and American Collegians for Life. Organizers of the pro-abortion march had earlier gone to court in an attempt to stop permits from being issued to the pro-life counter-demonstrators. “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,” said Georgette Forney of Silent No More. “We are the faces of the choice they promote.” [The Elliot Institute News Email Publication Vol.2, No. 5 —