Bogotá, Colombia, Apr 21, 2021 / 14:30 pm
The ProMujer pregnancy help center operated by the Moms 40 Coalition for Life Foundation in Bogota discovered April 16 it had been tagged overnight by abortion activists with false accusations such as “here we force women to give birth" and "be careful: forced motherhood."
In response, a group of young mothers who had been served by the center posted pictures of themselves and their babies with the hashtag #NoMeObligaronAParir, or “they didn’t force me to give birth”. In addition, several of the mothers and their children came by to clean up the site.
According to the foundation’s Facebook page, the center was opened in 2017 and is an outgrowth of the 40 Days for Life campaign which was launched in 2015. Moms 40 refers to women who said yes to life due to the prayer vigils, and as of January this year the center has served 250 women.
Pamela Delgado, director of the foundation, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, that the mothers weren’t content with just cleaning off the façade and so they decided to start a campaign to make it clear that "no one forced them to give birth."
It was the moms’ idea, the director said; they told her, “What (the abortion activists) are saying isn’t true. Nobody forced us to give birth. We’re going to support the foundation, it’s not fair what they’re doing.”
“The moms surprised me,” Delgado said.
Several photos have already been posted on the foundation's Instagram page, out of a total of approximately 20 testimonials that will be posted in the next few days.
Delgado commented that after these mothers give birth “they become lionesses in the defense of life. They’re very strong women and we don’t learn that by having an abortion.”
“Abortion clips our wings. When a woman doesn’t abort and chooses life, the wings multiply and we can grow. This can only be done by God, no one else,” she explained.
Leidy Parra, 27, was aided by the pregnancy help center when she was going through a very difficult situation and could only think of aborting her daughter, Violeta, who is now a year and a half.
The young mother told ACI Prensa April 20 that when she saw the photo of the pro-abortion vandalism, she immediately thought of going to clean up the center, where they are still assisting her.
“When I saw the graffiti I was outraged and felt helpless because that’s not the way it is. We then went to erase that lie. By what (the abortion activists) wrote they’re telling us they believe that when faced with a crisis pregnancy, the only thing to do is to have an abortion. They believe we’re incapable of turning unwanted motherhood into something happy and desired,” Parra said.
The young mom said that after helping clean up the center she still didn’t feel right “because several people could have seen the graffiti and doubted that we’re being helped there. So I thought of raising my voice and showing the kind of help we’re getting from the foundation.”
Parra said that at the Moms 40 Coalition for Life Foundation "they don't judge us, all they do is guide us.”
The mothers who have been helped by the foundation, she emphasized, “are a sign that yes, it can be done, regardless of the situation we’re going through, there will always be a way out. Abortion is not the solution.”
The young mother told ACI Prensa that she encouraged the other women, telling them, “we can talk about this and explain it with a short message with the hashtag #NoMeObligaronAParir. They were inspired and began to send in the photos.”
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In one of the posts, one of the mothers says the center “has been the best thing that has happened to me. I don't know what I would do today without my baby."
