At the March for Life, Washington D.C., 1.24.11
Her name was Janet. * I haven’t seen her in nearly 40 years but I remember her exactly as she looked in the Hardscrabble, our high school yearbook: hair the color of cornstalks and eyes like the Illinois sky on a hot summer day. A pale, pretty girl. A good student but not great. A really nice girl, my friend Janet.
She called one night a few months before we were due to graduate and said she had something to tell me, something she couldn’t talk to anyone about. Could she come over?
15 minutes later tires crunched on the gravel outside our farmhouse. Streator was 11 miles away and Janet lived on the far side of town – how did she get there so quickly?
Up in my bedroom we sat cross-legged and I looked at her anxiously. Jan’s eyes were rimmed with red, and she buried her face in her hands as her body began to rock. In between sobs she choked out a few words. Pregnant. The older, controlling boyfriend none of us ever liked. Abortion. He forced her to go. She was afraid of what he would do to her if she refused. It was already over. Her baby was dead.
And Jan was dying inside.
I don’t know what I said but it was too little, too late. I wrapped my arms around her shaking shoulders and prayed. We were just two 17-year-olds – one who had never had a boyfriend and one whose first and only love had pressured her to have sex and then end the life of the child who was conceived.
Abortion. The word was ugly then and the 1972 law legalizing it has only made it fouler.
Yesterday afternoon I stood on the National Mall in Washington, D.C in honor of the 38th annual March for Life – a middle-aged woman in a gray parka holding a large black sign with four simple words. In a crowd estimated at over 200,000 I was one small drop in an ocean of humanity. The people swelling around me could not have been more diverse. Jewish rabbis and Franciscan brothers. Catholic nuns and young mothers. Families pushing their children in strollers and the disabled in wheelchairs.
And students. Tens of thousands of high school and college students who poured out of buses in a tidal wave of joyful, peace-filled, life-loving protest. “We are the Pro-Life Generation,” their signs read.
“We are Abortion Abolitionists.”
“Social Justice Begins in the Womb.”
These kids are going to change history, I thought incredulously. They understand how sacred life is, and no one is going to convince them otherwise. And as I walked in their midst towards the Supreme Court, I gripped my own sign a little tighter and held it just a little higher as I thought of the 50 million people who have had their lives ended since 1972 in the way Jan’s child did.
“Women DO Regret Abortion,” my sign said.
Jan, I did it for you.
*name has been changed
Maggie Rowe 
Maggie – awesome post. It was a gut kicker for me.
Wow Maggie. What a privilege! So glad you were able to go, and what an encouragement to hear about the students. Those “drops” are making up a tidal wave.
The power of your words never cease to get right to the depths of my heart… thank you for this post — hope all my friends read it and rejoice that God is calling forth a “pro-life generation”!!!
Powerful sign and story, Maggie. Hope and pray your friend sees it and knows redemption. Will never forget the elderly Catholic man I took care of briefly in the hospital. He knew he was dying and wept because he had talked his wife into aborting their first child, thinking they couldn’t afford one then. They had a second, with Down’s syndrome, and now he was leaving his wife and handicapped son without an older son or daughter to help in their care. He realized God had known best.
Men also regret abortion. Thank you for triggering this memory. Evy
Thank you for your comment, Evy. I also saw men marching carrying signs saying “Men Regret Lost Fatherhood” as well as women with personal signs saying “I Regret My Abortion.” It took guts for them to travel all that way and march in a sea of people to make whatever difference they can in the fight for life.
I’m so proud you were there in D.C.! That must have been an amazing experience! We didn’t get to talk about it tonight. Maybe that was the bit of news that was escaping you before we hung up?
Amber, I’ll call you tomorrow to tell you about my time in DC. I found out today that there were actually about 400,000 participating in the March for Life, most of them students – and the media ignores it!