PROVIDENCE — The demonstrations are almost daily now.
Chants and rants for and against the right to an abortion. A cacophony of loud voices that fill the cavernous State House.
At the actual public hearings, women of a certain age have told Rhode Island’s lawmakers of risks they took before abortion was legal. A former lawmaker told of getting into the car of a stranger en route to a “doctor” of unknown pedigree. The potentially life-threatening infection that followed. A plea decades later that no woman ever again be put in that situation.
On May 19, the president of the group Servants of Christ for Life went on Twitter to ask why the other side — the anti-abortion side — wasn’t getting equal time in the media.
In one such tweet, Tyler Rowley said: “There is a group of RI women called Silent No More who have deep regrets about their abortions. They are now active pro-lifers and willing to discuss the details of their abortions. Perhaps a profile of those women to cover the other side of women’s experiences.”
On Memorial Day, Julie Lamin, 51, of Scituate, and Hannah Grant-Lusignan, 53, of West Warwick, accepted an invitation to talk about the events in their lives that led them to the front lines of the anti-abortion fight at the State House, and the sidewalks outside clinics that perform abortions.
One had three abortions, the other four, before, they each said, they were driven by “despair? and “desperation? to break the cycles they were in, find solace in the Catholic Church and commit themselves to giving “abortion-minded men and women” the kind of information, advice, encouragement and practical help they say they wish someone had offered them.
When asked how many children she has now, Lamin says: “I have three children here.” Grant-Lusignan: “Five here.”
Lamin is easy to spot. Amid the “STOP abortion” signs on the State House steps, hers says: “I regret my abortion. ... Ask me why.”