Girl is shot at clinic in argument over abortion.

Genocide's child.

Heartbreaking.

More feedback on the March.

A member at Live Journal has asked people who participated in the March for Women's Lives on Sunday to offer feedback on how they and others around them responded to the small groups of pro-life witnesses, silently holding various signs, including some that read "I regret my abortion".

The whole thread is of interest. I was particularly moved by this young person's experience:

I was at the march, and when my section of the crowd started walking by the first section of pro-lifers (the silent, stoic type), the pro-choicers changed their chant to "Pro-life, that's a lie! You don't care if women die!" It was chanted loudly and in the general direction of the pro-lifers. I automatically started chanting it, too, while simultaneously thinking that I did not like the chant. I then noticed many marchers around me holding their hands in the air in the peace sign, also directed at the pro-lifers...yet still chanting the same chant...it seemed very contradictory to me. So I then vascillated between being silent but holding my hand in a peace sign, and chanting while giving the peace sign, too. I was feeling very torn by the whole thing.

I was surprised, I must admit, to see the pro-lifers being so quiet and calm; I had been expecting viscious yelling and Bible-brandishing. Instead, the pro-lifers seemed genuinely heartbroken at/for/because of all of us pro-choicers marching in support of what they believe is murder (which I don't), and because of this, I felt more compassionate for the pro-lifers than I had expected to feel. As soon as we passed them and our loud chanting died down, I marched silently for several minutes, my stomach in knots, just reflecting upon it all...

Abortion in literature.

This is an entry in my occasional series on how abortion is portrayed in literature. I'm interested in this because my sense is that writers are apt to present a picture of abortion that is less agendized and more true to reality--that we'll find out more about how people really react to abortion by reading what is said in poems and novels than in opinion columns.

Today, we have a fascinating case in point.

Anna Quindlen is the author of four best-selling novels. She won the Pulitzer in 1992 for her opinion column in the New York Times. Currently, she writes a column every other week for Newsweek. Quindlen is well-known for her pro-choice advocacy. She has served on boards for Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League.

In one of her Newsweek columns in 2001, Quindlen complains that "many people still see abortion as a negative act."

Quindlen's 1998 novel Black and Blue was a national bestseller. Oprah designated it one of her Books of the Month. It has more than 400 reader reviews at Amazon.com.

"Black and Blue" is about domestic violence. Franny Benedetto is regularly battered by her sadistic, controlling husband, a New York City cop. She finally takes her 10-year-old son, flees to Florida with the help of an underground railroad for women in her situation, and takes on a new identity.

The novel has frequent flashbacks to abuse episodes, including the beating that is the final straw. It is made clear to the reader that Bobby will kill Franny someday. It's also made clear that the law is no protection against someone like Bobby--three other women in the novel who got restraining orders are murdered by their husbands.

The novel slowly, slowly inches toward the very worst thing that happens to Franny. We know it's the worst thing because when we finally get there, Franny tells us so. "It was the worst thing Bobby ever did to me. It was the worst thing we ever did." It's an abortion.

Franny is in the early stages of a pregnancy when she decides that she must escape Bobby to save her life. As part of what she feels she must do, she goes to an abortion clinic to have the child eliminated. The scene at the clinic is described in slow motion--the sights, smells and sounds that are painfully familiar to anyone who has been on one of those tables.

As we learn 90% of the way through the novel, Franny has been haunted by this abortion in ways that are entirely familiar to anyone who has experienced the range of thoughts, beliefs, memories and feelings that are are coldly and collectively labelled "post-abortion syndrome".

Franny dreams of a little girl who is drowning in an ocean as Franny turns her back and walks away. Painful memories and feelings come up when a new friend in Florida becomes pregnant. She thinks about the age the child would have been now, what she would have looked like, how they would have held each other. She describes herself as needing to "draw a curtain" over what happened that day.

When her new lover enters her in their first act of lovemaking, she numbs out. We find out later that this is because she suddenly feels the speculum inserted into her by the abortionist instead of her lover's penis.

"Many people still seem to see abortion as a negative act."

Apparently including Anna Quindlen, who doesn't allow herself to portray an abortion as an act that one might have chosen to finish a degree, or because the father doesn't feel quite ready to be a dad, or because the demands of motherhood seem restrictive and overwhelming. Nope, her heroine only gets to choose an abortion as an apparently necessary act to save her life. And even then she has to be haunted with regret, impaired sexuality, and intrusive flashbacks.

Lest anyone imagine that ferious pro-choice advocate Anna Quindlen would herself have ever made this choice, she hastens to reassure an interviewer that there are absolutely no autobiographical references in the novel.

"'There aren't any,' " Quindlen replies. 'It's very
satisfying for me to have written a book that's really
completely imagined.'"

Attorney General releases photos showing conditions inside abortion clinic.

More stories from Sunday, posted at Silent No More Awareness.

I think that the post-aborted Latina woman mentioned in the story posted there by "Mary" might be the woman in this picture.

Her sign says, "Thirteen years later, my abortion hurts me still."

Note the caption placed over the photo, which reads, "Pray, you'll need it, your cause has been defeated."

Nice.

Photo link courtesy of The S.I.C.L.E. Cell.

The responses to the first post have been amazing, and so many are writing me to share their grief, even relatives of women who had abortions. We are getting them in touch with ministries that can help them heal. It was all worth it, if one woman can find healing. And if one more decides not to abort, for whatever reason, that’s one less woman who will be physically damaged by abortion, and someday, cry.

All day at the march, I could see so many of the women who looked sad when they saw my sign, also read my T-shirt, which said, Rachel's Vineyard. They are now one google search away from finding a phenomenal source of caring people and healing.

(Men too, and other relatives, like uncles and grandparents of aborted babies, by the way, are welcome at Rachel’s Vineyard. You don't have to be Catholic, or even Christian. There was a Jewish man on my retreat weekend, everyone there in strictest confidence, and wherever the name “Jesus” was used, they simply said, “Yahweh” for this man.)

The pro-abortion marchers weren’t the only ones with hateful signs and words. Right across the street from me, I also saw the sign bragging about having "popped the abortion doc" (i.e., killed him). It made me so angry I wished I could have gone over and ripped it to shreds myself.

I heard the obscene, antagonistic “pro-life” screaming, and I too object to the bloody pictures. Last year, when I’d first gone to offer compassionate help to the women going into the same abortion clinic where I had my own abortion, I saw someone bring out the huge photo of the dismembered head (missing the lower jaw) of an aborted baby. My son was there with me. I had to turn away; I started retching and almost threw up right there on the sidewalk. My son said, “Mom, don’t look at it!”

That was the first time I’d seen photos such as that. When they tried to show me those pictures 25 years ago, I refused to look. So it wouldn’t get to me. I got so good at blocking out all thought of what I was doing, it lasted for 22 years.

I am ambivalent about showing those pictures ever, but thought they did not have a place at the march. I know that some women have said the pictures were what changed their minds against abortion. But I still think a positive message of offering help, real here-and-now, survival help, is the message better sent than one of horror.

There was a man in his 80s on the sidewalk when I went for my abortion, and he's still there, screaming at the women. A so-called "Catholic" but he isn't. He screamed at me then, “You’re a murderer!” He still does, at the same place where I offer compassionate help. He also still says, "If you die on that table in there now, you deserve to die!" I cringe each time; I've tried everything to stop him. I befriended him over a year ago, and later said to him one day, "Did I deserve to die too?" He looked down, shamefaced, and mumbled, "No." I said, "Neither do these girls." But did that stop him? No, unfortunately. I'd give both arms to silence him and all like him. But despite his venom, my friends and I have helped between 1 and 8 women each of 2 days a week to realize they don't have to have abortions, that there IS a lot of love and help for them, from us and the centers we know offer this. And they are so thankful someone finally offered them the REAL help they needed.

At the march, I also saw the abhorrent "God hates you" signs in the distance. God doesn't hate anyone. Those people holding those signs and saying hateful things to the marchers or to women at clinics need a lot of help, and for those of us who pray, our prayers. Seriously. They may not learn until it is perhaps too late for them, that they've not only gotten God's Word all wrong, but they've disgusted many people who otherwise might not have rejected God's love and blessings.

Operation Witness, a separate group with its own permit, told all their joiners, in writing, to bring none of the bloody photos so I don’t know who those people were. And there was one person arrested, I believe, for throwing the inkpaint-eggs, although it’s questionable now whether it was a pro-lifer who threw it because this photo looks like it was a pro-lifer who got it in the face, since that’s an anti-abortion sign up-close-and-personal next to him. Either way, it’s also shameful.

At the actual start of the march, we in our Silent No More group found ourselves being bumped out of the way by one of the antagonistic “prolife” groups. Neither they nor the pro-death “prolifers” were part of our group; we possessed the only legal permit for the side of the street and that corner that we were on. Police shooed away from their original sites the “God Hates You” ones and braggarts praising killers of abortion doctors. I watched one of the former groups try to usurp our spot. We immediately asked the police to move them up the block past us because we didn’t want to be considered part of their Bible-thumping “holier than thou” message. We did not succeed, to our horror and dismay, so they were interspersed with our women and men. I don’t know where the death-braggart sign ended up. I do know it had been across the street from me.

The vulgarity of the marchers’ signs and chants still amazes me. Here are just some of the printable ones:

“Barbara Chose Poorly”

“Euthanize Christians”

“If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?”

“God is Pro-Choice, She Has Aborted Troubled Fetuses By Miscarriage Billions of Times”

“God, Save Me From Your Followers.”

“Not Every Ejaculation Deserves A Last Name”

“Make Love Not Babies”

“Women Are More Important Than Tissue.”

I found it ironic that one of the most prevalent signs said, “WHO DECIDES?” and then right beneath it, the words, “NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA.”

Another sign that may at one time have had some truth but I don’t think does anymore: “77% of anti-abortion leaders are white men…”

1. Serrin Foster at FFL
   
2. Georgette and Janet at SNMAC
   
3. (Georgette also is National Director of the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life
   
4. and Janet’s also Associate Director of Priests for Life; I don’t think we can have a woman be President of THAT group, now....)
   
5. Wanda Franz, President of the National Right to Life Committee
   
6. American Life League has Judie Brown (President) as well as Scarlett Clark and Mildred F. Jefferson, M.D....
   
7. ...who is also president of Right to Life Crusade, Inc.
   
8. Kristen Day, Executive Director of Democrats For Life (with 6 women out of 11 directors on the board)
   
9. Bonnie Chernin Rogoff, Founder of Jews For Life
   
10. Mrs. Terry Schlossberg, Executive Director of Presbyterians Pro-Life
    
11. Doris Gordon at Libertarians for Life
    
12. Roe No More Ministry, founded by the former “Jane Roe,” Norma McCorvey
    
13. Carla (Grace4All), Executive Director of Safehaven Ministries...
    
14. ...and VP of Ramah International
    

I think those 13 women leaders (or associate leaders) of about 14 major groups would beg to differ.

For the men, there’s 5 in the major groups; help me out, folks, I may have missed some on both sides of the gender coin: Joe Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League. Dr. David Reardon, Director of the Elliot Institute. J. C. Willke, MD, President of Life Issues Institute. Mark Crutcher, Life Dynamics. Rev. Philip L. (Flip) Benham, Director, Operation Save America.

So the tally, at least at this point, REALLY, is about 26% of leaders of anti-abortion groups are white men (19 groups, 5 men). And 74% of those leaders are WOMEN. Almost the reverse of what the signs said.

(There are others where it HAS to be a man so how can you honestly count it? Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President of Human Life International (a Catholic pro-life missionary training organization), Priests For Life’s Fr. Frank Pavone, and others like them.)

The worst sign was held by the laughing guy whose sign pointed to himself, reading, “BABY KILLER.”

The worst chant was “ROE V. WADE, OR YOU WON’T GET LAID!” I couldn’t believe my ears or eyes. There were hundreds of women, aged 17 through their 80s, chanting this.

I realize that not every woman in the entire march was chanting that, nor would they have if they’d all heard it. I imagine there were more than a few marchers who were mortified to hear such drivel.

It said that the chanters believe that, without the right to abort the results of sexual intimacy, they’d never get a man to sleep with them again. I thought, what could be sadder than that?

When the last of the marchers passed by, we began walking back to the hotel and inadvertently came to the tail end of the march as it made its second-half return circuit. So some of the same people saw us twice, only this time we lined both sides of the street. There were quite a few I REGRET signs on both sides now.

The amount of garbage left behind by some marchers was substantial. Those in our group who’d been around after the Marches for Life said there was a lot more garbage this day after the Choice march; not just piles of signs left on the roads and sidewalks, but consumer garbage too.

After they had all passed by, we continued our walk back. Interestingly, no one said a word to us. No one taunted us, as before. We passed by small groupings of marchers for many blocks and not one person got in our faces. They just stared at our I REGRET signs a long time, and said nothing.

Many thanks to all who’ve commented, especially those sending well-wishes. Remember all the men and women who had the same courage to hold these signs out there Sunday, as well as all the great folks who helped us by standing in support.

If you or someone you know might be hurting from an abortion, please contact me or the folks at Silent No More, toll-free and confidentially, 1-800-395-HELP and 1-866-482-LIFE, or for Rachel’s Vineyard, it’s 1-877-HOPE-4-ME. No one on this or any other blog or anywhere will ever know that you wrote or contacted us. We won’t be writing about it, here or anywhere.

There are also international resources at all these places; find them here and here [just type in the first few letters of your country]. We’ll help you find a good, confidential post-abortive resource. Emily has the homepage links on the left too.

There is no need to stay silent anymore, but then again, you need never go as "public" as we did. Even if no one else in the whole world knows, you can still seek the help we've found, and it'll be just you who knows. A lot of us were where you may be right now. We aren’t here to hate, but to help, even if you may have been one of the ones screaming at and name-calling those of us who held these signs at this counter-protest. So many of my own current friends admit to once being like that, and now they’re running these resource centers to help women, before --and after-- they choose abortion.



Update: Many readers have come to our blog for the first time because of this entry. We warmly welcome you. We encourage you to visit our main page. We offer daily news updates about the post-abortion movement and look forward to your readership and participation.

From Salon, Behind the Scenes at the Women's March for Lives.

"It was the march's first moment of real reach beyond the age barrier, or at least an acknowledgement that there were communication challenges between grandmotherly activists and their daughters and granddaughters. But did Steinem have any choice? She was there for my mother; she was there for me. But I doubt that any daughter of mine will know who she is. Who will be there for her? It's been 12 years since the last march. Twelve years from now, Steinem will be 82 years old. Who will take her place onstage? Who else will combine good politics and good brains and good looks in a way that makes young women stop dead in their tracks to shake her hand? It must have been scary, to look over three quarters of a million people, and realize that she doesn't have anyone to hand a torch to."

It's another example of the Roe effect.

Sounds of Silence.

by Pia de Solenni in today's National Review Online.

A growing voice is emerging. This is the voice of the woman who's had an abortion, who regrets it, and who feels she was never empowered with adequate information to make a real choice. Some of these women and their supporters countered the march with a silent, peaceful protest.

And the silence worked in at least a few cases. Janet Morana, co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign stood at Constitution and Seventh Streets with a group of about a hundred post-abortion women and their supporters. In the midst of their silence, a woman from D.C. named Shirley came up to two of them. She was holding a Planned Parenthood "Stand Up For Choice" sign and she said, "I can't hold this sign and march with them anymore." She explained that she had lost a child to crib death and then she broke down sobbing.

Rory Conway, a pro-lifer from Washington, D.C., saw women standing with "I regret my abortion" signs confronted by angry marchers. He commented, "The crowded scene was not so unlike the angry mobs of Jerusalem on Good Friday, and I recall that Christ, in the midst of his detractors, kept his silence. In the midst of a war of words, perhaps only silence can provide the seedbed of peace."

Although there are a number of women who would be empowered simply by more information, many women in unplanned pregnancies need more than information. They may also need tangible support and protection from families or boyfriends who are insisting that they abort.

As I said yesterday, lots of different people have been linking here in the last few days. Yes, even this bulletin board for finding/rating escorts.

You do have to register, a simple process, to see the interesting discussion and...well, it's an over-21 site.

Update: I registered like, ten minutes ago, and I'm getting IMs from men who are members of the site. Caveat emptor.

A Choice to Heal.

Here's another new post-abortion ministry. I'm adding it to my list of regional links.

I'm also giving it my new award; the Emily 5-star award for best graphic design on a post-abortion healing site.

Peggy Noonan's piece in today's Opinion Journal: 'Raisin' and Falling: A 40-year-old play reveals something awful about today's culture.

"But I must tell you of the small moment that was actually a big moment. (There's a possible spoiler coming up, so if you don't know the story and mean to see the play, stop here.) An important moment in the plot is when a character announces she is pregnant, and considering having an abortion. In fact, she tells her mother-in-law, she's already put $5 down with the local abortionist. It is a dramatic moment. And you know as you watch it that when this play came out in 1960 it was received by the audience as a painful moment--a cry of pain from a woman who's tired of hoping that life will turn out well.

But this is the thing: Our audience didn't know that. They didn't understand it was tragic. They heard the young woman say she was about to end the life of her child, and they applauded. Some of them cheered. It was stunning. The reaction seemed to startle the actors on stage, and shake their concentration. I was startled. I turned to my friend. 'We have just witnessed a terrible cultural moment,' I said. 'Don't I know it,'he responded.

And I can't tell you how much that moment hurt. To know that the members of our audience didn't know that the taking of a baby's life is tragic--that the taking of your own baby's life is beyond tragic, is almost operatic in its wailing woe.

But our audience didn't know. They reacted as if abortion were a political question. They thought that the fact that the young woman was considering abortion was a sign of liberation. They thought this cry of pain was in fact a moment of self-actualizing growth.

Afterwards, thinking about it, I said to my friend, 'hen that play opened that plot point was understood--they knew it was tragic. And that was only what, 40 years ago.'He said, 'hey would have known it was tragic even 25 years ago.'

And it gave me a shiver because I knew it was true."

Without pre-abortion screening, abortion endangers women's health.

Read this.

Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe syndicated columnist, calls into question her reliability as a journalist by trotting out an old urban legend, long since discredited, here [2007 UPDATE: Note how the Washington Post Writers Group has removed her original article from the current page with that URL]:

"After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions don't have to imagine a world without choices."

"Dr. Christopher Tietze, a leading pro-abortion statistician for Planned Parenthood, The Centers for Disease Control, etc., called this claim of 5,000-10,000 deaths a year prior to legalization 'unmitigated nonsense.' Noting that 45,000 women of reproductive age die each year from all causes, Tietze states, 'It is inconceivable that so large a number as 5,000-10,000 are from one source.'" (from Harvard Divinity School, Kennedy Foundation International Conference on Abortion, Washington D.C., 1967. Also published in Scientific American, Abortion, Tietze & Lewit, January, 1969, Vol. 220, No. 1, pp. 21, 23).

NARAL Co-founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson admitted: "I knew the figure was totally false. But in the morality of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of the way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the [criminalization of abortion] laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible." (Aborting America, Doubleday Publishers., p. 193)

Dr. Andre Hellegers--before his death, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Georgetown University--testified for the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 25, 1974 that maternal deaths from illegal abortions had reduced from 1,231 in 1942, down to 133 deaths by 1968 because of better medical care and antibiotics.

In 1972, the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics recorded 39 deaths from illegal abortions and 25 deaths from legal abortions.

And they pay HER the big bucks.

UPDATE from Emily: I've written to Ellen Goodman at ellengoodman@globe.com. I gave her the link to this discussion and asked her if she is going to stand by what she wrote last week. I've also written to Christine Chinlund, the Boston Globe's ombudsman, at ombud@globe.com.

I can relate.

See The Self-Imposed Child Loss Experience blog for links to more photos.

Speechless with laughter- Part II. And while this is also pretty sad, I wish there had been no stooping to name-calling... I think it would have had much greater impact if the woman's words just spoke for themselves.

We've had many first-time visitors in the last two days. Welcome and please explore the many resources and links on the left.

Annie's account of her experiences on Sunday at the March in D.C. has been linked to and commented about by lots of other bloggers.

Some have made favorable comments and some have made disparaging comments. It'll take a few days to sort out and respond to any new or interesting ideas that percolated up out of all the dialogue.

Meanwhile, Annie has been contacted by two magazines and one newspaper for further information.

I do want to quickly make a few comments.

A thought I've seen here and there in the last few days in response to the type of witness offered by Annie and Silent No More is that the fact that some women suffer psychological or spiritual trauma because of an abortion experience is not a good argument for making abortion illegal.

I agree entirely with that, as I have said off and on here over the last year that this blog has been in existence.

If abortion is a grave moral wrong that should be legally prohibited, that would have to be argued on the basis of claims about the moral status of the developing child.

My sense, though, is that some pro-choice people are allergic to the idea that there are women who experience profound emotional distress related to abortion. Instead of being curious or kind about what that lived experience of another human being is like, there's a tendency to brush it aside as a ploy by people who can't tolerate women making choices.

So often, the political debate over abortion is a very inadequate proxy for one's personal response to specific abortions--one's own, or the abortions of others in one's family or circle of friends. This is true for people on both sides of the political divide.

However, we cannot resolve and heal from our past--real choices and experiences of our own or of our loved ones--by engaging in political debate and judgment.

Anger, helplessness, contempt, fear, feelings of inadequacy, guilt, blame of oneself and others, grief--these feelings about personal experiences can and do fuel tremendous amounts of fiery political positioning and judgment of others. Again, that's true on both sides of the political/moral divide.

Although the psychological trauma experienced by some men and women after abortion is not a good argument for making abortion illegal, it is an important fact to take into consideration when thinking about issues like Women's Right to Know laws. These are state-level laws that mandate that states provide certain kinds of information, such as sonograms of the developing fetus, to women considering abortion. If women come forward and say, "I would not have gone through with my abortion if only I had known," that's relevant information for a state legislator to take into consideration.

Women's stories of psychological distress are relevant to state legislatures in deciding whether abortionists should be required to screen for known psychological risk factors for post-abortion syndrome.

So, women who regret their abortions do bear witness in areas where their experience is relevant to political questions.

However, leading pro-choice groups such as Planned Parenthood, NOW and NARAL are adamantly opposed to any such legislation. In taking this position, they have turned a steadfastly blind eye to what abortion really feels like after the fact for many women.

Molly Ivins: The families of women who were too poor to afford abortions after public funding was cut off came as well.

Pondering this...pondering.....

Did they bring the family members who would have been aborted, had the women not been too poor? Or did they leave those people at home, so they wouldn't know that their families are still mad that the government didn't pay to have them aborted?

Dr. Tom Messe’s Firsthand Account of the March.

Dr. Tom Messe is a Navy physician who was recently threatened with discharge and loss of his career in both the Navy and as a physician, all because he is pro-life and his medical knowledge and moral conscience prevent him from dispensing birth control to Navy-base patients in Groton, Connecticut. He has given me permission to post his account of his experiences at the march, when he was with Group 3 of our Silent No More gathering.

Tom is also a member of The Truth Squad, a group giving talks for several years in Connecticut and elsewhere about the medical, personal and legal aspects of abortion and post-abortion trauma, consisting of an OB/GYN doctor (Tom), a post-abortive woman (Nicole Taylor), and an attorney (Bert Hilburger).

Tom’s wife and our friend, Charnette, was diagnosed in 2002 at age 31 with Stage 3 breast cancer as a result of her abortion in 1990 before meeting Dr. Messe (Stage 4 is the worst/highest). She has told her story on OPRAHand in ROSIE Magazine. She found out about her cancer the day before learning she was pregnant with her little boy. While Charnette is not free of the cancer completely yet, there is hope.

Last June at one of our Silent No More press conferences, local reporters were amazed to hear this African-American woman’s haunting, convicting words as she spoke of her fight against both breast cancer and the horror of her abortion. Her picture and story were front page news the next day.

Charnette’s unborn daughter’s name is Sarah Eve Messe, and Charnette and Tom have two children, Gabby and Christian, all of whom need our prayers.

The great majority of women used to never get this cancer at the early age of 31. That started to change in the 1970s. Research has found that breast cancer rates, among younger women especially, started jumping up between 1973 and 1987: “First, in their study of women aged 25 to 44 years old, White et al [White E, Daling J {who is pro-choice} , et al. Rising incidence of breast cancer among young women in Washington State. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1987; 79: 239-243] found that although their model predicted that the increase in breast cancer incidence due to greater mammography should be 12%, in actuality the incidence of breast cancer grew by 29% between the early 1970s and late 1980s. Thus, mammography accounted for less than half the reason for rising breast cancer rates.”

Here is Dr. Messe's account:

“On Apr 25, 2004 I attended the Pro-abortion rally in Washington DC as a pro-life witness. Our small group met at the Holiday Inn on C St. before the March. I joined Silent No More and Priests for Life to show that women and men often regret abortion. On my back I displayed a small sign that read, ‘Abortion gave my wife Breast Cancer.’ I held in my hand a large sign that read, ‘Women need Love, Not Abortion.’ I also held a 12 inch crucifix. Before we left the Hotel, they warned us to be silent. ‘Do not engage these people.’ ‘Be strong, this is not for the faint of heart.’

“To get into our position on 7th St, we had to cross through the Mall, right through the pro-abortion crowd. I was naive coming down to Washington, I did not think they would have that many. But they did have a large crowd. Our group of one hundred or so walked silently, single file. The barrage of insults and screaming in our faces was hard to take.

“When we arrived in position on the curb, we had an hour before the march began. Some of us prayed a silent rosary and I offered Holy Water to my fellow witnesses to protect us for the spiritual war that was about to begin. A group of one hundred young pro-abortion supporters decided to leave the rally on the Mall and march in front of us and scream. Their banner read, ‘We're Pro-choice and we RIOT.’ [photo here] [Also, this looks like Tom's actual group, being confronted by these people.] They played drums and chanted in our face. They were heavily tattooed and dressed in scanty black clothing. They rubbed their genitals and made pelvic gestures upon each other. ‘Masturbation, Procreation,’ they shouted over and over again. The police held them back and after twenty minutes finally made them continue down the street.

“When the marchers came by, we were assailed by the usual comments, to which our group did not respond. They said:

“‘If men could get an abortion, it would be a sacrament!’

“‘Shove that crucifix up your A__!’

“‘Jesus was black, not White!’

“‘Jesus was Pro-choice!’

“‘How many babies have you adopted?’

“‘F - - - You!’…while they pointed the middle finger at the crucifix.

“Their signs were equally vulgar: ‘F - - K Bush!’ Many had a black and white poster of a photo of a woman’s genitals with the pubic hair removed. A hand with the ‘Peace’ sign was right in front of the most private anatomy. The sign read: ‘Get the Bush out of our lives.’

“As a physician, I was particularly saddened to see several medical students marching with signs that read, ‘Tomorrow’s abortion providers.’ I must pray for them in particular.

“One woman saw my sign about my wife’s cancer and shouted, ‘If your wife would have breast fed, she would not have gotten breast cancer.’ Little did she know that she breast-fed our daughter for 2 years. She was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with our second child and could not breast-feed him on account of having chemotherapy and a mastectomy. She cried night after night when the doctors told her she could not breast-feed him. That woman’s comment was particularly painful. My wife and I are convinced that it was her abortion at age 20 that gave her breast cancer at age 31.

“Several people attacked us with stickers that read, ‘Pro-choice’. They stuck them to our clothes and our signs. They put one over the small sign about my wife. A gentlemen who owns a truck with pro-life slogans on it was driving around the Mall and by the end it was covered in hundreds of stickers that people had attacked him with. The Mall was like a War Zone. The garbage and piles of signs were everywhere. They desecrated our Nation’s most respected monuments. There were people announcing the need to help clean up, but no one was.

“As I stood in prayer and looked up at the dark cloud cover, I could not help thinking about the movie ‘The Passion.’ God darkened the sky when Jesus hung on the cross. He would not let the sun shine that day either. It was peculiar how dark the sky was, but yet it did not rain. For anyone who doubts the existence of Satan, you should have been there. I do not claim that the people were Satan, but they were caught in his trap.

“I also could not help thinking about St. Luke’s words in the Acts of The Apostles. ‘We told you not to preach in that Name.’ The Pharisees warned the apostles not to speak in the Name of Jesus, and scourged them. They felt joy that they were found worthy of suffering for the Name. The pro-abortion supporters were telling us not to mention that Name!

“Over two thousand years later, the same spiritual war continues....”

"'I own a house,' she said. 'I'm doing better than a lot of my friends who've haven't had children -- and better than my friends who've had abortions.'"

We've seen this many times before: women who changed their minds at the last minute at the clinic, come back to tell us of all the great things that happened to them after they chose to let their babies live. Blessings, they call them.

The march, 4-25-04, continued. Here goes. For those who didn’t see the earlier post, a re-cap:

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.


The night before, our hotel seemed filled with pro-choice advocates. Any time we shared an elevator ride with any other women they assumed my friend and I were with the march. We remained relatively silent and just nodded a lot, not knowing what to expect. At dinner, we heard teens in an extended family of about 8 making crass, disrespectful anti-Bush jokes and guffawing about their cleverness (yes, freedom of speech is a right and I defend it, but to see a snide 14 year-old teen who probably knows next to nothing but what he hears in anti-Bush alternative rock music lyrics being so disrespectful was still unsettling). The parents thought he was hilarious (“What do you call George Bush and his father? Dumb and Dumber!”)

The next morning, on our way to the meeting room, we saw some folks with “Women Deserve Better” and “Feminists for Life” T-shirts, and grabbed them, thanking them. We finally were not alone in that place. It was ironic that we’d also just passed a young teen girl wearing a march sticker and a T-shirt that read, “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like.” She and all the others we’d see wearing that, including Ashley Judd, have no clue how wrong they are.

We learned that the march organizers had gone to court to deny our First Amendment rights to free speech.

The march organizers, NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the Feminist Majority (misnamed, as they are neither true feminists nor a majority) had gone to court last week to have Judge Gladys Kessler, district judge for the District of Columbia, uphold the denial of our permit application. We had asked to stand directly across the street from the Rally on the National Mall. We issued a press release on it: Silent No More Awareness Campaign co-founder Janet Morana said, “Isn’t this hypocritical, marching for total access to abortion for all women while denying some women access to speak on public sidewalks?”

At 10:00 a.m., maybe 140 or more of us walked to Constitution and 15th, one of three places we were allowed permits. Two other groups set out at 11 and 12 noon, of the same size. Five hundred or so total, Georgette said at the end of the day. We had people joining us on the fly, saying, “Give me one of those ‘I REGRET’ signs please!"

Let me clarify something: I don’t have official numbers on this, but there are well over five hundred women members, maybe even well over one thousand members nationwide of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, but not all of the five hundred present yesterday were post-abortive women and men. When I wrote above “the Silent No More Awareness groups” I was writing quickly and was referring to the three distinct groups we formed yesterday for the three permitted locations, NOT that all of us were post-abortive. Sorry if it was misleading. The fact is that not all of those who ARE post-abortive held signs saying that, and that is just fine. No one is forced or pressured to “go public” but if any post-abortive person feels that sharing their presence and just holding a “Women Deserve Better” or "WOMEN NEED LOVE NOT ABORTION" sign suits them, they are more than welcome to do just that.

So that’s why we did not have five hundred post-abortive women holding those REGRET signs. It is because of treatment like we got that we DON’T have five hundred or more holding those signs. Who wants to be brutalized verbally by thousands in public when we’ve already chosen something that brutalized us physically and emotionally?

We invited the Women Deserve Better and Feminists For Life and the great young people at American Collegians for Life (ACL) to join us. Permits being at such a premium because the march organizers were fighting them in court, we didn’t want these groups to be left wandering around, risking being accused of illegal loitering. So in each group there were probably about a dozen women holding the I REGRET MY ABORTION signs, and a few (really don’t know how many) men holding the I REGRET LOST FATHERHOOD signs.

The whole point of the protest was to let our signs do all the talking for us. We were to not respond to anything. It was hard to do.

At each location, we stood single file along the sidewalk, as pro-choice marchers streamed past us toward the rally site, already in progress.

The silence had the most incredible impact on the pro-choice people walking by. They seemed to fully expect a barrage of insults and condemnation. Some actually crossed the street to avoid us, but most did not. It was actually eerily calm and quiet even while probably a couple thousand walked by.

At least a dozen women (I’m guessing they were between 45 and 65 years old) who saw my sign before the march sneered at me saying, “I had TWO [abortions] and I don’t regret them for a second!” The bragging quality shocked me at first, but as the day wore on, it just saddened me.

I silently made eye contact with as many people as possible, women and men. The older, middle-aged ones, had their eyes glued straight ahead for the most part. But almost all the young women, even of high school age, looked at my sign as they walked by on that sidewalk, laughing among themselves and their boyfriends or girlfriends. When my sign caught their eye, they then reflexively looked to see who was holding it. After our eyes met, a few quickly looked away, not wanting to know, but most just stared at me a long time in shock. A lot of brows furrowed as they walked away, no longer laughing; they’d never even thought it was possible, I suppose, that a woman would think twice about her abortion, could really regret having done it.

One of our men holding the I REGRET LOST FATHERHOOD signs was a lone, 22-year-old college fellow, handsome as a movie star, quiet and reflective. The pain was so evident on his face. He’d come to the group all by himself. Said little to anyone. Perhaps his buddies wouldn’t understand or had already laughed at him for missing his little boy or girl who he’d never know. We only learned his story at the very end of the day, walking back to the hotel, as he offered to carry my friend’s tripod and camera case. My heart just broke.

We stood in that long, silent line on the left side of the march route from 10:30 till 12:30, when the march began right at our corner. We lined the barricades at the curb then, and where I stood, right at the corner, sort of in a much broader view as opposed to just in the marchers' peripheral vision, was the first group of counter-protesters that they saw.

The riot police, perhaps fifty in our area, in full battle gear, lined up on the march-side of the barricades, facing us, about 10-15 feet apart. Before the march, I said to the few of them standing right in front of me, “Thank you for being here. I know it’s your job so you have to be here, but thank you anyway. You won’t be getting any trouble from us.” One of the policemen nodded his head respectfully at me in silent acknowledgment and thanks.

But then they all were moved up the street a ways, so for about the first two hours, there were no riot policemen or women within about 35+ feet of where I stood. And that’s how the marchers got to walk directly on the opposite side of the barricade I touched. Nose to nose, almost. These were coming from the next street over, what would have been the left side of the rally stage, to my right, on 15th Street.

Now that I think of it, I suppose I was probably the first of about maybe 35-40 of the I REGRET signs the marchers saw that day at numerous spots along the three locations. That hadn’t occurred to me before. Perhaps that’s why I got so much of the attacks. I don’t know if the others had the same experience. I held my sign high, so those in the middle of the street’s packed throng could see it. Many people in the distance, in the center of the crowd, craned their necks to read our signs.

After they read my sign, at least 25 separate women throughout the day laughed at me and spat out these exact same words, “Then you shouldn’t have HAD it, that’s all!” Some even shrugged, like it was that easy to make that decision. Like I regretted it THEN, but went ahead with it anyway?

I saw women read my sign and burst out laughing and pointing at me, saying sarcastically, “Pooor baby!” I saw men look me right in the eye after reading the sign as they shouted out the chants that are the 30-year-old standards of the pro-abortion movement, like “Pro-Life? That’s a lie! YOU don’t care if women die!” and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!” Little did they know, how much we do care and do help women to survive and have a better alternative to abortion.

Others saw the sign and said to me, “Too bad!” The ones holding the signs “Don’t Want An Abortion? DON’T HAVE ONE!” wove their way from the opposite side of the crowd just to wave their sign in my face and taunt me.

One woman, maybe about 30ish, started screaming at me, at the top of her lungs, “I CHOSE!! AND I’M PROUD!” over and over and over again. The others around her took up the chant, some verbatim, some saying instead, “I CHOOSE!! AND I’M PROUD!!” The veins were popping out on her forehead and neck, her face was beet red, and she was hunched over at the waist as she shrieked out the words at high volume, glowering at me, for at least five minutes straight. If there is a definition of “frothing at the mouth,” that was this woman at that time.

Later, after reading my sign, one woman started a chant that about a hundred marchers began screaming at me, “THAT WAS YOUR *CHOICE*!” essentially telling me I had no right to be upset or to regret. They stopped marching and stood right in front of me, all one-hundred of them glaring directly at me, some not more than 2-3 feet away, jabbing fingers at me in the air, their faces twisted and contorted with contempt. I just looked from face to face, amazed at what I was seeing. It was starting to get frightening. Not for my personal safety, but their hatred was feeling as though it was reaching a fever pitch and becoming toxic.

Can any of you pro-choicers stop for just a moment, and imagine nothing but a flimsy piece of fence standing between you and 100 frenzied people, not safely away on some wired blog, but there live and in person, who are screaming their disgust and hatred for you? The riot police were nowhere to be seen. They were off up the street and allowed the marchers to pass by within inches of us at that spot in the very start of the march.

After about two hours of the marchers being inches away from us, a woman from our group I had not met came over to me and put her arm around me. She said, “I just couldn’t listen to and watch you take more of that abuse. I’m here to hold you up in prayer and stand by you.” Her name is Gloria. I didn’t ask her her name until the march was over, but I thought, How fitting a name for my "angel," for she was truly sent to me when I needed her most!

She rubbed my shoulder in sympathy and comfort, and I hugged her back, thanking her. Her husband Michael (the archangel’s name? Hmmm…) just behind me also said, “We are going to stand on either side of you and just pray for you, that God give you the strength to withstand this, and to protect you. You’ve taken enough.” I thanked them both, and as she rubbed my shoulders, it occurred to me, “This is just what my son would be doing if he were here.” At the age of only fourteen, he’d wanted to come to “protect me” and was terribly worried, even distraught over the possibility of something happening to me. I’d reassured him that nothing bad would happen. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Whenever I have done a public talk that he has attended, he would get up from his seat and come to my side at the lectern whenever I became emotional, like this time.

The young college woman at the fence to my left, Kelly from Boston College’s ACL, and all her college friends around her, also hugged me or patted me on the back and said they were praying for me too. So many of these great college kids came up to me and just said, in such a reverent voice, “Thank you for doing this.” I know the others were saying it to the rest of us post-abortive women holding these signs throughout our three groups, too. I’m not the only one. I’m just the only one who can post it on a blog probably. Please keep them all in your prayers.

I said to them, “It always turns out that the ones who are the most upset at us, the angriest ones, the ones who are so hateful, have so much to cover up, and this is how they do it. They are the post-abortive ones, even if they don’t say so. And they’re the ones who hit the wall the hardest when they do. I know, because I denied it for over 20 years…I know what happens when it all comes out.”

As my new friend Gloria rubbed my shoulder, she also literally helped support my arm, as I’d been holding the sign up high for so long, my arms were tired and drained of blood.

I suddenly felt the tears come. At first, I think I cried because I’d been trying to deflect and not react to so much venom for two hours, that now that others were helping me be strong, I could allow myself to be a little weak. I then cried because I miss the daughter I’ll never know.

You know how it all rushes through you at once when you start weeping? Everything comes out. I cried because, here were these thousands of people fighting for a right I wish they’d never allowed me to have, instead of fighting for the daughters and sons I and millions of others will never have. I felt they were fighting for the death of my daughter, to deny me the right to grieve her.

Then I realized I wasn’t crying so much for me as I was for them. I felt they were fighting to hide their loss because to come to grips with it, after being so fervently pro-choice, would bring upon them the same kind of abuse I was getting. I felt so crushingly sad for them. The cold, angry hearts, the screaming remorselessness, the relentless cruelty they seemed capable of, toward me and toward another living human being, their own flesh and blood. I realized that they don’t see those living human beings as the gift they are, because if they did, the façade could no longer justify their “choice.” Just as it one day stopped hiding the truth of my choice.

I just wanted to reach out and hold them all, like it says in some old corny song, “I wanna hold ya till I die, till we both break down and cry, I wanna hold ya till the fear in me subsides.” And I knew: I couldn’t. And it just made the tears stream down even more.

Openly weeping, as my new/old-soul friends gathered around me, hands on my arms or shoulders, my vision was so blurred I could no longer make eye contact with the people in the crowd. I could only sense that something was changing. People were still looking and pointing, but no longer laughing or screaming at me. I didn’t care what they said or did to me anymore. I didn't care if they laughed that I was crying out there in front of thousands. I just couldn’t keep it in anymore. The looks that I did catch had become subdued and stunned at the same time.

A young man of about 20 stopped as he was about to pass right in front of me. He looked Chinese-American, and he just stared as I cried. I looked in his eyes since he was right in front of me. Weeping, I pleaded with him, “How can you be in this march supporting this? I lost a daughter to this, and it is the worst thing I have ever done or will ever do in my entire life, and I can never outlive this pain.” He looked like he was going to cry. I asked him, “How old are you?” He quietly replied, “22.” I could barely speak, but I told him, “My daughter would have been 25, and she could have been your girlfriend…or maybe even your future wife.”

I couldn’t speak after that, and neither could he. He just looked at me with such pain in his eyes and touched my arm and said, “I am so sorry…” as he reluctantly moved on slowly.

One of Silent No More Awareness Campaigns’ co-founders, Georgette Forney, came over to me and asked if I was OK. I was still weeping, and all I could say was, “They just don’t know what they’re doing…” She called out to all of our group nearby, “Please hold Annie up in prayer, she really needs our prayers right now if she’s gonna get through this, and right now, she’s the lightning rod for all this, they are targeting her because she’s the one here they first see with the message that scares them the most.” There were about fifteen of our group surrounding me at this point, physically and in silent prayer.

Shortly, it seemed to me the police returned and put some men in front of me, forming a sort of invisible line, to keep the crowds away from us by about fifteen feet or so. I don’t know if it was Georgette asking them to, or if they just did it on their own.

A woman dressed in pink with a short-cropped haircut caught my eye from the crowd as I’d been crying. She gazed at me, and called out, “I regret my abortion too!” But she was part of the march. I didn’t understand what she really was trying to say. She was still pro-choice, it seemed. Yet she locked eyes on mine, and looked really sad for me. As the crowd moved her along, I just looked at her, still teary-eyed, not knowing what to say back. I thought she’d moved past, when suddenly she broke free and ran back, past the riot cop, and threw her arms around my neck to hug me, to console me! I was stunned, but I hugged her back and wept hard again, whispering to her, “WHY are you out here in this? HOW can you still believe it’s OK??” It was not a condemnation, it was an invitation, an honest incredulous bewilderment on my part, and a sincere wish that she too would find comfort for her pain forever, not just for this moment.

She didn’t say anything, because I could hear her start crying too. She hugged me tight for what seemed like very long minutes. The whole crowd beyond her stopped and stared. No one spoke or made a sound, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. It’s as if everyone was just holding their breath. It seemed like time stood still. And for us, it did. We just cried on each other’s shoulders in the midst of all this madness and hate. I still didn’t know quite what to think, but when she finally pulled back, I thanked her, and we just looked at each other a moment, feeling each other’s pain, but then she ran back into the crowd and disappeared.

I didn’t have time to give her one of our cards about who to call to begin seeking help and healing from this awful grief, and I am sorry for that.

If you’re out there, know that I sent one of our group after you to try to get the card to you, but he couldn’t get your attention and I’m so sorry for that, and that I couldn’t come running ahead to find you. I was so stiff and in pain from standing in the same position for hours, I've had a lot of arthritis problems from advanced Lyme disease for the past year, and I just couldn’t move that fast if I tried. I want you to be able to contact me, if you’re ever reading this. The email is AfterAbortionBlog@yahoo.com . Or call Georgette at (800) 707-6635, and either she or I can help.

I want to thank you, again. I want to help, if I can. I want to be there for you when you need someone to help.

A little while later, another woman locked eyes with me as she moved slowly forward. We just looked at each other, and I realized that every time I had met someone’s gaze like this and they just kept looking into my eyes, they could see the truth of their own pain. Just as this woman, about my age, was about to pass out of sight, I saw her mouth the silent words, “I’m sorry…” I smiled that pursed, sad smile in thanks and nodded my head. I wondered, “Is she saying she’s sorry for my pain? Or is she sorry for the abuse that others were giving me? Or is she sorry for both of us?”

The women who were compassionate understood why I held that sign. Another in our group, Wendy, a student at Georgetown’s Nursing School, said she saw a different woman look at my sign and actually begin to weep. Others said they saw at least 2 or 3 more women do the same when they saw the I REGRET signs.

Some pro-choicers will fight me on this, but: all these women showed compassion, for us and for themselves. Because in their minds, I think, they saw themselves holding that sign, now that others had made it possible and acceptable to do so. That word comes from the Latin “Com” (WITH) and “Paseo” (TO SUFFER). “Compassion” means “TO SUFFER WITH SOMEONE.”

The first step to healing, they say, is recognizing that there’s a problem. Those women weeping and saying they were sorry for us, saw that we were willing to suffer WITH them, that we shared the same problem --that we knew our abortions were wrong-- and they also saw that we had found enough peace and healing to be able to stand up and fight so that they too could heal too.

Almost immediately after that, a woman ran right up to me and asked, “Why exactly do you regret your abortion?” The cops didn’t stop her. I was about to answer her, since I thought she’d asked it in a genuine, want-to-know way, when she then blurted out in disbelief, “Or DID you REALLY HAVE an abortion at all!?” I was speechless at the question, and Gloria piped up and nicely but indignantly said, “How can you ask her that? I’ve been listening as she stood here for hours taking all this abuse and hatred from you all! Why would she subject herself to that if she DIDN’T have one???”

I finally said to the woman, “I regret because I don’t have my only daughter here with me now on this earth, and because my abortion gave me endometriosis, I had major surgery because of that and a lot of pain, and because it’s caused me a lifetime of pain and grieving that only now is coming all out of me since I denied it for over 20 years. THAT’s why I regret it.” She then ran back to the march, without saying another word. It seemed almost as if she’d been dared by a friend to come over and ask, and really perhaps didn’t care to know the answer.

A middle-aged man came right up to my face taunting me, “At least YOU HAD the CHOICE! DEAL with it! My wife had an abortion AND we also adopted a child! If you regretted it you shouldn’t have chosen it!” I couldn’t quite get how he made the connection that BOTH were good choices, for themselves OR for the children involved. He was so incensed at me, just for holding the sign I held.

The signs that also made absolutely NO sense whatsoever left us shaking our heads to see if it would clear our vision: “PRO-CHILD…PRO-CHOICE” Huh?? Is this from the Dictionary of President William Jefferson Clinton? Another doublespeak sign was “Pro-Family…Pro-Faith…Pro-Choice” These were not hand-drawn signs, but production-run pre-prints. I can only guess which of the major organizers dreamed up those oxymorons and are having a sick laugh over fooling the public on both of those.

The march organizers also blatantly stole the longtime motto of American Life League’s “PRO-LIFE: Without Compromise – Without Exception – Without Apology” and had mass-produced signs reading “ABORTION: Without Compromise – Without Exception – Without Apologies.”

There’s a bit more but I’m pretty tired right now, so I’ll post this and try to pick up where I left off, hopefully tomorrow night. I do want to talk about the horrible pro-life sign I saw that I wish I could have gone over and ripped it to shreds myself. Also looking for permission to post the story of one of our friends from Connecticut who was in Group 3 of our SNMAC bunch, who has as harrowing a story to tell of threats of riot on 7th Street. HIS wife suffers from advanced stage breast cancer at the tender age of 31 which was brought on by her abortion. And HE’s a certified, practicing physician.

Good night, till next post.

UPDATE:
NEXT POST HERE.

Navy Physician Dr. Tom Messe's account here.

Scrappleface: "Final Generation" of abortion advocates rallies in Washington, D.C.

Speechless with laughter.

A note from a reader:

I went to the '03 March for Life and that was my first encounter with Silent No More. I was very moved by the sight of those 3 dozen women, all surely freezing (it was windy and less than 28°), holding the "regret" signs, giving their testimonies, and long outlasting the NOW bunch 50 yards away. So that, a little more than a year later, some 500 of you were there. it sounds to me that your movement is gaining, and I hope I'm right about that. God bless.

Kathryn Jean Lopez on the March and Silent No More.

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.

Update: Many readers have come to our blog for the first time because of this entry. We warmly welcome you. We encourage you to visit our main page. We offer daily news updates about the post-abortion movement and look forward to your readership and participation.

Washington Post: a big, multi-generational Vagina Monologue.

There was an an awful lot of talk about reproductive rights from people not known for reproducing.

I wondered about the general composition of this huge crowd when I watched the CBS coverage last night. They showed many, many women of all ages, sizes and personal styles, from many different camera angles. I saw no children and just four men. The shots CBS chose tended to make these men come off as being very fringe members of society.

People who listened to the Beatles have different ideas about life. It's a generational thing.

I'll post stories off and on as they come in about the March for Women's Lives rally held yesterday in D.C. Here is a collection of quotes.

This looks like the basic AP story on the rally.

For some blog commentary, Ms. Musings checks in here.

Interesting article in the Los Angeles Times.

With 800,000 in attendance, it would be safe to say in line with national statistics, that at least 250,000 of those who attended the March have had one or more abortions.

How many of them wore T-shirts or carried signs or spoke about their own experience with abortion?

Not very many...a tiny percentage, if any.

Why is that?