Silent No More

Silent No More

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Following are excerpts of remarks delivered today by Congressman Chris Smith (R-Hamilton), Co-Chairman of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, at the 31st annual March for Life:

According to every responsible nationwide poll, the indisputable fact that abortion is violence against children and the ugly fact that abortion methods dismember, mutilate, decapitate, or chemically poison innocent babies is at long last shocking the public out of its slumber.

Like you, Americans want the abortion holocaust to end.

With margins that increase each and every year, especially among the youth - and there are so many of you here today - polls are showing that Americans have seen through the lies of the abortion industry.

They see the truth that abortion destroys a living human person and they demand that the violence must stop.

Since 1973 more that 44 million babies have been killed - a child slaughter equal to 7 times the total number of people living in Massachusetts.

Americans recognize another truth as well. Abortion exploits women. Abortion hurts and harms women physically, emotionally, and psychologically; including the mounting evidence that abortion can increase the chance of breast cancer. Women deserve better than abortion.

You here today know this. You are the ones providing real help to women through pregnancy resource centers and sidewalk counseling. You have so much to offer to hurting women. Your service and commitment gives women and children the chance at life, a life without the devastating and deleterious effects of abortion.

There is a new powerful voice of women called Silent No More who speak of their personal abortion tragedies. They deeply regret that they believed the big lie, that abortion was a benign option, a reasonable choice, rather that an act of violence.

Women wounded by abortion - like actress Jennifer O'Neill, singer Melba Moore, civil rights activist Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, and co-founder of the National Silent No More Awareness Campaign, Georgette Forney - have called on us to listen to their heart wrenching stories and take seriously our moral duty to protect women and children from the predators who ply their lethal trade in abortion mills throughout the land.

These brave wounded women are the new champions of life.

They have refused to be silent any longer. They care too deeply about other women and their children and they want others to be spared the anguish they have endured. And to the millions of women who have aborted, they are uniquely equipped to convey the breathtaking love, healing, and reconciliation that God provides to those who ask.

I invite you to hear their dramatic stories today at 5 p.m. outside the Supreme Court. And to the media I ask you - I implore you - to take the time to hear what these brave women have to say. The Internet site www.silentnomoreawareness.org, founded by Georgette Forney and Janet Morana, has more information on this movement.

I urge you gathered here today to continue your heartfelt commitment to women and their babies. You are making a difference. Your prayers and fasting are needed to bring about the day when, as President Bush so wonderfully states it, "unborn children are welcomed in life and protected in law".