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 as part of a completely-silent counter-protest, well, I thought that I was ready for it.
We professed to be “Silent No More” about our abortion regret, but that day, to be “Silent this one time.”
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 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 14 year-old who probably knows next to nothing but what he hears in anti-Bush alternative rock music lyrics being so disrespectful was still unsettling).
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 acknowledgment.
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