(Suanne) Edmiston said the students told the abortion advocates they would leave, but wanted a uniformed official to explain why they had to leave a public event and one for which they had obtained tickets from the Kerry campaign.

After seeing the students wouldn't leave, the NARAL women told each other to link arms and began to surround the pro-life students.

At the same time, older rally participants were screaming to leave the students alone. Edmiston told LifeNews.com that the older women told the younger abortion activists they could possibly hurt the students and that the students had a right to attend the rally.

But that didn't stop the young NARAL backers.

They became angry and began to push and shove the pro-life women. One woman told Suanne that her mother should have aborted her.

The NARAL women eventually enveloped three of the students, including Suanne, in a circle and began dragging them away.

Suanne was wearing flip-flops and one of her shoes fell off as she was taken away.

"My foot is dragging on the gravel and they wouldn't let me get it," Edmiston said.

The abortion advocates dragged her barefoot over a rough gravel surface that caused her foot to bleed so much that Edmiston required medical attention afterwards.

Meanwhile, Martin Leuders, a D.C.-based freelance photographer, also witnessed the incident, and, in an interview with LifeNews.com, confirmed the account of what happened.

At the time the scuffle began and the women found themselves dragged away by abortion supporters, Martin wasn't close to the action. As he moved in to begin taking pictures, rally participants tried to stop him. Before he could grab a shot, one person with a pro-abortion sign hit him on the head and he began bleeding.

"They assumed I was trying to get [pictures] for propaganda purposes," Leuders told LifeNews.com.

After they read my sign, at least 25 separate women throughout the day laughed at me and spat out these exact same words, “Then you shouldn’t have HAD it, that’s all!” Some even shrugged, like it was that easy to make that decision. Like I regretted it THEN, but went ahead with it anyway?

I saw women read my sign and burst out laughing and pointing at me, saying sarcastically, “Pooor baby!” I saw men look me right in the eye after reading the sign as they shouted out the chants that are the 30-year-old standards of the pro-abortion movement, like “Pro-Life? That’s a lie! YOU don’t care if women die!” and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!” Little did they know, how much we do care and do help women to survive and have a better alternative to abortion.

Others saw the sign and said to me, “Too bad!” The ones holding the signs “Don’t Want An Abortion? DON’T HAVE ONE!” wove their way from the opposite side of the crowd just to wave their sign in my face and taunt me.

One woman, maybe about 30ish, started screaming at me, at the top of her lungs, “I CHOSE!! AND I’M PROUD!” over and over and over again. The others around her took up the chant, some verbatim, some saying instead, “I CHOOSE!! AND I’M PROUD!!” The veins were popping out on her forehead and neck, her face was beet red, and she was hunched over at the waist as she shrieked out the words at high volume, glowering at me, for at least five minutes straight. If there is a definition of “frothing at the mouth,” that was this woman at that time.

I guess what impresses me the most about what Annie and the other folks at Silent No More did was the way they did it. No screaming, no getting in people’s faces. They just stood there silently holding signs that read “I Regret My Abortion” or “I Regret My Lost Fatherhood.” They absorbed a torrent of verbal abuse and did not return it.

I have to wonder whether among the hundreds of thousands of folks walking by SNM last Sunday, there were a few who looked at some of their comrades in struggle hurling insults, and then looked at the small crowd of peaceful, silent witnesses and asked themselves a question: not “who’s right and who’s wrong,” but rather “what kind of person would I rather be?”