Pro-lifers say ‘therapeutic’ abortion on minor in Peru exploited to push legal abortion

Fatima, Portugal, May 21, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA).- The photo of a baby dressed up as the pope at the Fatima Shrine rocked social media during Pope Francis’ pilgrimage to Portugal for the centenary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

But what many do not know is the moving story behind this tender picture.

Diego Guerreiro is from the Portuguese city of Pinhal Novo, located some 25 miles from the capital, Lisbon. He was born prematurely at 33 weeks, weighed three pounds eleven ounces and measured 16 inches.

Speaking to Tvi24, his mother Carla said that after the birth she could not see her baby. “They had to immediately resuscitate him and take him away to the intensive care unit,” she said.

The little one “had trouble breathing. None of the doctors could explain why he was struggling to breathe so much,” said Carla, who has another seven-year-old son.

She said that Diego was in the Santa Maria Hospital for 76 days, where he experienced both many improvements and setbacks in his health. The baby spent half that time in neonatal intensive care with respiratory assistance.

MiniPope is doing the rounds on social media. Born premature, mother promised to bring him to #Fatima100 if he lived. Grandma made costume pic.twitter.com/0DWTdFxYIT

— Filipe d’Avillez (@Favillez) May 12, 2017

The evening of the day he was to be discharged, Diego again had a severe reversal and was returned to intensive care. At that time, Carla asked Pope Francis to intercede for her son and promised that when the pontiff went to Fatima on May 12-13, she would bring the baby to the shrine.

On Thursday May 11, they arrived at Fatima and spent the night in their car in order to go to the Shrine at 8:00 a.m. the following day. They got a place near the security barrier installed along the route where the popemobile would pass.

For this occasion, the mother and the grandmother had the idea of dressing him up like Pope Francis. They both searched the Internet for a pattern that “would be easy to make” and the grandmother sewed the outfit.

To complete the ensamble, Carla put around his neck a rosary that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gave to the baby’s father when he was at the Fatima Shrine as part of the security detail of the pontiff.

Diego is still having problems, with his mother saying “actually he can faint at any moment.” Meanwhile, she remains steadfast and alert to help her son when needed.

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Vancouver, Canada, Feb 20, 2017 / 04:29 pm (Aid to the Church in Need).- After hundreds of lethal drug overdoses in British Columbia in the last year, the Archbishop of Vancouver has said Catholics must act to help those addicted to opioids and other d… […]

An image from the Canadian pro-life group Choice42’s animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life. / Choice42

Montreal, Canada, Jul 5, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).

A viral video is challenging society and the media for pressuring women to choose abortion. Its message is simple: Women have an incredible Wonder Woman-like ability to choose life for their unborn baby – and succeed. They can, in other words, choose life for two.

Canadian pro-life group Choice42 released its animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life on May 29. The short film follows a scared, wide-eyed young woman as she flees from the dark monsters of societal pressure and struggles to climb up a mountain. The video attracted hundreds of thousands of views on social media and was so successful that, on June 28, the group released a version in Portuguese, appealing to countries like Brazil. It empowers women with the truth that, yes, “you can do this.”

EWTN Pro-Life Weekly highlighted a clip from the two-minute video on June 26. 

“So you’re pregnant. You didn’t plan this. You didn’t want it. And now you have a choice to make,” the narrator says as the animation begins. “Take a breath. You can do this.”

“No matter what’s going on in your life, you can rise up and take this on,” she adds. “You can rock this.”

But, the narrator cautions, “I’m going to be real with you.”

“The choices that our society and the media are going to present you with, they’re not all equal,” she says. “Right now, your baby’s heart is already beating. That started about 21 days after conception. We’re talking about another human being here, and not just any human being. Your baby.”

The video goes on to warn that “abortion is probably going to be suggested, even pushed on you” also “by the people closest to you.”

But, the narrator urges, “you’re already this baby’s mother.”

“This child is already here in the world, living and growing inside you,” she says. “And what these people are suggesting to you is that you murder your own baby.”

While the narrator acknowledges that her words might sound harsh, she says, “I’m not going to lie to you. Not when your baby’s life is on the line.”

But pregnant women are “not alone, not by a long shot.”

“Reach out for help if you need it,” the narrator says. “We’ll help you.”

As an organization, Choice42 does just that: It exists to expose abortion for what it is and to empower pregnant women to choose life by providing emotional support, educational programs, and financial assistance.

The founder and director, Laura Klassen, dedicates her time to creating videos like this and others, in which she often wears her trademark pink wig. This one, she said, took six months to create.

“We just thought, why don’t we just put this into a video,” she told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. “Something really relatable to mostly younger women, and just put that out there so that hopefully we can reach more women with our message even if we’re not talking with them one-on-one.”

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