Thursday January 21, 2010
Unexpected Large Demand for New Silent No More Awareness Signs
30-35 thousand will be carried in Washington March for Life
By Steve Jalsevac
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Janet Morana, Co-Founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign and Executive Director of Priests for Life, is thrilled with the unexpected success of the organization’s new sign campaign. Morana told LifeSiteNews in Washington Wednesday that she expects 30-35 thousand of the signs will be carried in the Washington March for Life on Friday and more at numerous other events across the nation this month.
Morana explained that her organization has their usual signs stating, “I Regret my Abortion” and “I Regret Lost Fatherhood,” but, those, she says, “are for the men and women who actually experienced abortion, come to healing and regret it.”
Regarding the new signs, she says, “we have other family members and other people who just know how bad abortion is but they want a sign too, so we have this new sign this year that says, ‘Women Do Regret Abortion’ on one side and the other side says ‘Men Regret Lost Fatherhood.'”
“Now that’s a sign, says Morana, “that anybody can hold to support the message of the campaign, to get the word out there that abortion is so damaging to men, to women, to families, to society at large.”
The organization is excited about the new campaign, says Morana, “because we have printed 45,000 signs and told people they could order them from us free of charge for their buses to the March for Life in Washington and the walk for Life in San Francisco, but also to be used in events all over the country this January.” The post-abortion women and men’s organization has also shipped 500 of the signs to its Canadian regional coordinator, Angelina Steenstra, who will use them in May for the Canadian March for Life in the nation’s capital city, Ottawa.
The original planned print run had to be quadrupled because of the unexpected demand. The health care debate seems to have been a major factor causing the strong response.
Morana told LifeSiteNews, “Originally, we were going to print 10,000 because we figured well, how many signs could people want? And then we had to call the printer and increase the order because we were flooded with email requests on our website. So, we are really excited that people really want to embrace this message and I think in particular here in the U.S. the health care debate, because abortion is damaging to women physically and psychologically. Now that is health care. It’s affecting their health care and if this administration can’t get the fact that if you don’t take abortion out of health care you are just going to increase to a ten, a hundred fold, the complications both physical … and psychological problems that these women are going to have after that abortion.”
As a result of the campaign Morana hopes that “more men and women will come to healing, they will register their regret and we’ll have a groundswell saying no to abortion. Because, you know what? If the grassroots say we don’t want to have abortion anymore in the United States, Canada and the whole world, it’s not going to happen. People are just not going to do it. So, it’s the grassroots that is going to change the laws.”
Morana says the organization is “getting more men now than ever before coming out and saying, you know, I was involved in an abortion in the past and regret that. That’s a child I lost. So they’re accepting their responsibility and if more men accept their responsibility we’re going to have a lot of people healed.”
After the Washington March for Life and other rallies this month it is expected that pro-lifers will take the signs home and use them in their local communities. Morana said this will allow the message to continue throughout the whole year.