Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

 This is the talk I gave at Yonkers Respect Life Week:

I would like to thank Mayor Amicone for having me here today
and for courageously declaring a week for life. I particularly love its theme
“Every life is worth living”.

 Every life, the elderly, the handicapped, the infirmed, the
unborn, each of our lives is worth living.

 In a time when it appears the value of all life is being
brought into question through abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and violence,
and with the danger through health care reform, it is so hopeful to have a week
dedicated to the dignity and value of every human being.

 As was mentioned, I am Theresa Bonopartis, director of
Lumina Hope & Healing after abortion a ministry of Good Counsel homes. GC
houses homeless pregnant women and their babies, and, through Lumina, reaches
out to post abortive people for healing through various means including Entering
Canaan, a post abortion ministry I developed with the Sister’s of Life.

 For the past 2 weeks, the world has been stunned and
saddened with the terrible plight of the people in Haiti as a result of the natural
disaster of the devastating 7.0 earthquake. I am sure we have all watched  it on TV and been captivated by the suffering of
the people and the loss of 200,000 lives. It makes us face our own vuneralbility,
and, in times like these, the world unites, for we all know such a tragedy can
happen to any one of  us.  

 As we should, we all want to help, and aide has been coming
in from all over the world to those people whose suffering we can clearly see  and imagine, and who we know, even before the
quake, had more than their share of crosses.

 The death toll has been said to be 200,000
people…devastating, and those alive fighting for their lives while surely mourning
the deaths of many they loved.. Mothers w/o their children, father’s suffering,
grandparents, siblings, the loss of even one life touches so many. Each one of
us mourns for all the life that has been lost. It is horrible.

 But there is another tragedy. Unlike Haiti ours is
not a natural disaster but a disaster of our own making that has taken over 50
million innocent lives in our own country. It is the killing of the unborn from
abortion.  We cannot turn on the TV and
see the devastation. We as a country chose to live in denial. As long as we do
not face it we can somehow justify it, but we are all living with the fallout
whether we admit it or not, and it is becoming harder and harder to deny. Like
the mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings and others suffering because of
the loss of life in Haiti, countless people are suffering in our country
because of the loss of life from abortion and in many cases it is worse because
we ourselves have participated in the loss of our family member.

 Not only are there millions of babies who have been denied
their right to life, but there are millions more people whose lives have been
stripped of their dignity, living in grief and shame because of abortion.

Siblings of these babies are suffering because they wonder
why their brother or sister is dead and they are alive, or they are worried
about a parent who is depressed or unattached because of an abortion they had
in their past.

  Grandparents, are
mourning the loss of their grandchildren through abortion, and yes, society as
a whole is suffering and loosing out on God only knows what talents and
contributions these people would have brought into our world by just being
alive.

 We have seen the threats to life increase on an immense
scale this past year and abortion continues to be the hot button of the health
care debate. They talk of a middle ground.. What middle ground can we have when
it comes to a person life? There will never be peace or compromise on abortion.
How can you compromise the taking of human life and the devastation it causes by
killing the unborn and damaging countless other lives. Every life is impacted by abortion.

 Yes, the situation in Haiti is awful and our hearts are
broken seeing the devastation there. We should continue to cry out for them and
offer our help, both physically and financially, but we also should cry out for
the tragedy in our own nation, by having weeks such as these.

 We need to offer women in crisis pregnancy help, and reach
out to all those suffering as a result of a past abortion, so that they can
come to see that forgiveness and healing is possible and they can have joy in
their lives again.

 Like Haiti,
we are a wounded nation who has brought our own disaster upon ourselves, but we
can change that. We can end abortion, a real change we can believe in. Until we
respect each and every life in this world, those in Haiti and those in the womb
we will never have peace, for God created each one of us in His image and truly
every life is sacred and worth living.

 Thank you