Living pro-vida
When Patricia Sandoval was a little girl, she used to sit in her Petaluma, Calif., backyard and write love letters to God, tying them onto a balloon and sending them into the sky. But at age 12, life grew difficult when her parents divorced. She also had her first ever “sex talk,” but not with her mom or dad.
One day, Planned Parenthood visited Sandoval’s sixth-grade class. After a graphic presentation about sex, Sandoval remembers a female representative told the class, “If you ever need anything, we are here for you.”
Sandoval’s parents immigrated from Mexico before she was born, and they only spoke Spanish. She was raised Catholic, the middle of three children, her father’s “princess.” Like many immigrant Hispanic parents, Sandoval’s father pushed the children to attend college and pursue the American dream. But when it came to discussing puberty, relationships, sex, or abortion, all Sandoval remembers is silence.
This same silence and pressure permeates many Hispanic households, even those with deep-rooted cultural or religious pro-life values.
Among other things, Sandoval learned from Planned Parenthood’s presentation at school how to have “safe sex.” But at 19 safe sex failed her, and she had her first abortion. Before the procedure, she says, she remembers a nurse telling her, “It’s not a baby … it’s a sac of tissue.” Sandoval believed her, and after two more abortions, she began working as a Spanish-speaking back-office nurse at Planned Parenthood in Sacramento. She says supervisors told her 90 percent of the clients were Latinos and spoke little English. She grew accustomed to a waiting room filled with 13- and 14-year-old Hispanic girls.
Hispanic women and their unborn babies account for more than 25 percent of all abortions in the United States, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. More than a quarter of the nation’s Hispanic population lives in California, where 17 percent of the nation’s abortions occur with little restriction and in many cases with taxpayer funding. Pro-life voices are routinely snuffed by the media and pro-abortion advocates with a firm grip on state politics.
But the silence is breaking. In recent years, “pro-vida” Hispanics in California and elsewhere are becoming more vocal and organized. What started small, like pregnancy centers offering Spanish brochures and bilingual staff, is turning into growing outreaches aimed at educating and emboldening Hispanic families and communities.
Read more at World Magazine.