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MARCH-PROLIFE Apr-26-2004 (1,080 words) With photos. xxxn
Pro-lifers offer largely silent witness at March for Women's Lives
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of thousands taking part in the April 25 March for Women's Lives in Washington, pro-life groups conducted a largely silent witness along the march route.
Even the group Silent No More Awareness, which urges its members to speak publicly about their abortions, decided to stay quiet at its locations along the route of those marching to keep abortion legal.
"Today we're being silent," said Georgette Forney, the group's co-founder. "It won't do any good to engage them. This is not the forum."
About 90 members of the organization, including many members of American Collegians for Life, lined one sidewalk near the start of the march route bearing signs and wearing T-shirts with a pro-life message.
Holding a sign that read, "I regret my abortion," Forney said one March for Women's Lives participant told her, "Have another baby." "Like somehow I can substitute one for another," Forney added.
Other gibes directed at the group included "Why don't you go play out in the street," "I didn't regret my abortion," "You should see a therapist about that," and "Choose Satan. He'll give you eternal life."
Annie Banno, Connecticut State Leader of Operation Outcry: Silent No More, told Catholic News Service she was in denial for 20 years after her abortion. She said in the five years since she has gotten to the point that "I can stand here and talk about it without crying my eyes out."
Banno said a Rachel's Vineyard retreat for women who have had abortions was the first step in her own healing. Still, "I'll never hold a daughter in my arms who's 25 years old."
Luz Marina Tomayo of Miami, also holding an "I Regret My Abortion" sign, said her husband coerced her into an abortion 13 months ago. "I've been depressed ever since," she told CNS.
She and her husband "almost split" because of the abortion, but have reconciled. But her 11-year-old son still resents her not caring for him and his 4-year-old brother as a result of her depression. "I abandoned them for many months. I couldn't take care of them," she said.
Tomayo said she considered suicide, "but I realized if I did I would never hold my baby in heaven."
At a second location along the march route, close to 100 pro-lifers lined the curb at an intersection.
There, Andrea Staargaard, 19, a student at Penn State University, talked about the abortion she had when she was 16. "This isn't the first time I've done this," Staargaard said, referring to talking about her abortion, "and it sucks every time" to discuss it.
"But it has to be done," she continued, "because there are millions of women who think this (that abortion is OK), and millions of children who have been lost."
Staargaard said her boyfriend found an abortion clinic in New Jersey and drove her there. Because Staargaard was a minor living in Pennsylvania, state law required parental consent, and Staargaard wanted to avoid telling her family.
"A doctor even suggested that I use a fake name," she said. At the clinic, she added, "I remember a nurse telling me that if I were her daughter, she would have me do the same thing."
In the three years since the abortion, "I never stop thinking about it," Staargaard said. One source of solace after her abortion was joining the Catholic Church. "I was pretty much an agnostic before," she said. "If I didn't have Jesus in my life I'd probably be dead. I know it sounds cliched and dramatic, but it's absolutely true."
The March for Women's Lives drew, by an estimate of its leaders, 1.15 million people to the National Mall. March leaders had predicted a turnout of 750,000. Although local and federal agencies no longer make official crowd estimates, Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey said he thought the turnout had met or exceeded planners' expectations.
U.S. Park Police arrested 16 members of the Christian Defense Coalition for demonstrating without a permit when they left the area for which the group had obtained permits and moved to an area reserved for the march.
Earlier, before marchers passed by, 60 members of the group had engaged in, literally, street theater at a different location. Participants first knelt in a blocked-off intersection, then lay down and curled into the fetal position in the street as others drew chalk outlines around them in the style used for homicides. The action moved Forney to tears.
After given their second warning by police that they were breaking the law, counterprotest organizers called off the demonstration. In Washington, nonviolent demonstrators who demonstrate without a permit are generally given three warnings before arrests are made.
Many of the participants wore T-shirts bearing the names of the pro-life groups American Life League and Rock for Life.
Between counterdemonstrations, Jenni Nelson, 23, of the Detroit suburb of Ecorse, Mich., said she seriously considered aborting her daughter, Liberty, now 3. Her parents, Nelson said, were pro-life "but I didn't want to disappoint them" by having them know about her out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
"I didn't know there were resources out there," she said. "I thought I was going to have to give up on college. I almost went to Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test." But with support from her parents and Liberty's father, Nelson was able to complete college. "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."
As about 50 members of Feminists for Life headed past the group, Nelson told them, "You guys are so awesome, so brave, so courageous. I really idoloize you guys."
On April 24, about 200 members of Catholics for a Free Choice took part in a brief demonstration outside the Vatican Embassy in Washington to protest church teaching on abortion. Kept at a distance were a group of pro-life counterdemonstrators less than half that size.
Also that day, Jeff White of Twin Peaks, Calif., was arrested by District of Columbia Police for carrying a fetus in a jar during a protest in front of a Planned Parenthood office in downtown Washington. He was charged with illegally exhibiting a dead body, which is a misdemeanor carrying a possible penalty of 90 days in jail or a $200 fine.
Protest organizers said White got the fetus from a California doctor and that it was from a miscarriage, not an abortion.
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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