Vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of thousands taking part in the April 25 March for Women's Lives in Washington, pro-life groups conducted a largely silent witness along the march route, Catholic News Service reported.

Even the group Silent No More Awareness, which urges its members to speak publicly about their abortions, decided to stay quiet at its locations along the route of those marching to keep abortion legal.

"Today we're being silent," said Georgette Forney, the group's co-founder. "It won't do any good to engage them. This is not the forum."

Holding a sign that read, "I regret my abortion," Forney said one March for Women's Lives participant told her, "Have another baby." "Like somehow I can substitute one for another," Forney added.

In other prolife/anti-abortion news:

---Before the march, results from a Zogby International poll were released by the National Right to Life Committee. According to the results, 56 percent of the respondents said that abortion should either never be legal or legal only if the mother's life is endangered or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. The poll also indicated 13 percent of Americans believe abortion should be completely unrestricted.

"Americans reject exactly what the marchers support: abortion on demand," said an April 26 statement from Cathy Cleaver Ruse, director of planning and information for the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

Ruse also said Zogby figures showing a 49 percent "pro-life" versus 45 percent "pro-choice" split among respondents was a "seismic change" in American attitudes on abortion. She cited Gallup polls from a decade ago that showed 56 percent of respondents said they supported keeping abortion legal compared to 33 percent who said they were pro-life.

---The abortion issue was addressed, directly and indirectly, in the long-awaited Vatican instruction on abuses in the liturgy, "Redemptionis Sacramentum" ("The Sacrament of Redemption"), issued April 23 by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

One instruction's provision reaffirmed that "sacred ministers may not deny the sacraments to those who seek them in a reasonable manner, are rightly disposed and are not prohibited by law from receiving them. Hence any baptized Catholic who is not prevented by law must be admitted to Holy Communion."

At a Vatican press conference marking the document's release, Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the congregation, refused to answer a direct question whether Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, presumptive Democratic candidate for president and a supporter of legalized abortion, should be denied Communion unless he goes to confession and repents his position.

It is up to local bishops in the United States to determine how the law applies in particular cases, he said. However, when asked more generally if a priest should refuse Communion to a politician who supports abortion, Cardinal Arinze said, "Yes."

Church law is clear that those who directly participate in an actual abortion are to be excommunicated, or denied Communion. Whether a Catholic politician who publicly supports legal abortion is to be judged by church authorities as not "rightly disposed" and therefore to be denied Communion is not as clear-cut as a matter of law. The U.S. bishops currently have a special task force studying such issues concerning Catholics in public life.