Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Marching for Marla -- Part Two


This year I attended March for Life in memory of Marla Ann Cardamone, who was browbeaten into an unwanted abortion that ended her life.

My first post covered the trials and tribulations of just getting to DC to begin with. The second challenge I faced was my sign.

Since I live in a rural area and my car was in the shop, there was no place I could go to get a sign printed. I designed a nice one on my Mac, full color, and Peter of March Together for Life tried to open it as an email attachment and print it for me, but my file kept crashing his computer. I got to the Family Research Council for the Blogs for Life conference, and they directed me to a nearby Kinko's. Problem solved, right? Wrong! I spent half an hour opening the file, tweaking it, and then discovered that their color printer went on the fritz and wouldn't accept files! So all I had was an 8x10 poor quality B&W. With this I hustled back to FRC and attended the conference. Then FRC let me use their copier to blow up the sign to double size, and tape it to the cardboard I'd brought to DC for that purpose. Not great, but as you can see it did the job.

Then, of course, it started to rain. Well, I had brought clear packing tape with me so I figured, "I'll just cover this with tape, no problem!" Ha! The tape wouldn't cooperate. It would tear. It would mat. Finally I vented my frustration to the guy next to me who said that the Devil sure was plaguing my efforts to stand for Marla. Hey, maybe! So I prayed. "Boss, give me a hand here. I promised Marla's parents I'd not let her be forgotten." My tape woes backed off as I prayed and I was able to successfully protect my sign. I was also able to find a "Women Need Love Not Abortion" sign, which I put on the back of my Marla sign.

When I got to the Supreme Court I joined the SNM ladies for a while, but my group was leaving. I used a pin as a knife to cut the tape and take my sign off the cardboard, then I folded the sign down to take off everything but the info on Marla. I taped this and the SNM sign to a discarded ALL sign and found a woman. "Are you staying here?" She was. I offered her the sign. "Can you be here for Marla?" "I sure can. Poor thing!" So Marla was being remembered and honored, even after I had to leave.

The reaction to the sign was good. Many people read it, and a few took pictures and a couple took down the Cemetery of Choice web site. Let's get out the word! Laws don't kill women; abortionists do!

No comments: