Hundreds of cities in Romania and the Republic of Moldova will host the 2018 Pro-life Month – “A Pro-life World” event during March 1-31, 2018, which will culminate with the 2018 Pro-life March – “A Pro-life World” on Saturday, March 24, 2018.
The measure of a society’s responsibility and growth is given by the extent to which the society protects the life of each and every one of its members.
Man’s right to life, freedom, and dignity does not start from, and is neither granted by, a specific financial, intellectual, health-related or age-related “baseline” – but springs from our mere humanity. And we are humans from the moment of our conception.
The Romania of today and tomorrow includes both its born and unborn children.
Every one of us, individually, and all of us, as a people desire freedom, dignity, and respect. Yet we cannot claim them if we do not acknowledge them first for the most vulnerable among us – the unborn children – or if we deny them for the women in pregnancy crisis.
It is only natural to wish that every child can be born and bring joy to those around them by their smile and the light in their eyes. And it is just as natural to support a woman who finds herself in a pregnancy crisis.
Actions that support life and its importance are a duty of honor for any society that wants to develop, further, and build upon what previous generations have passed down to it.
A pro-life world is a natural state of things.
This is why this year’s theme of the pro-life month, held between March 1 and 31, 2018, and the Pro-life March, which will take place on March 24, is “A Pro-life World”.
A Changing World
More and more people become pro-life. Embryological facts, common sense, the human person’s eternal value and dignity – which faith recognizes as being above anything else in this world – convince an increasing number of people.
The truths about the reality of human life inside the womb and the reality of pregnancy crises are gaining more and more visibility. A growing number of people – especially teenagers and young adults – come to know them and this changes their lives.
Every year, science provides new information about the wonder of life inside the womb. Until 2016, it was thought that the first heartbeats appear 21 days after conception. In 2016, Oxford University published a study which concluded that the heart becomes active 16 days after conception! (http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-10-11-first-our-three-billion-heartbeats-sooner-we-thought)
Even politicians who were formerly in favor of abortion on request are now pro-life. A few decades ago, the current President of the United States was an abortion supporter. However, after having encountered a first-hand pregnancy crisis case and seen the child who was born, he understood that the wonderful child could not have been born if their mother had not chosen life. He thus became pro-life as a result of experience, and not by embracing an ideology.
Moreover, in the U.S. – where people are free to carry out research and science has never been turned into ideology, as it did under communism –, there are over 2800 help centers for women in pregnancy crises, providing free services. There, one’s love for one’s neighbor has risen far above the country’s 600 otherwise market-oriented clinics which perform (always paid) abortions on request.
These are examples that pertain to a pro-life world – a world that nurtures support, dignity, respect, and love translated into action.
Being pro-life is being pro-science, pro-woman, pro-child, and pro-support.
Let us Open Up our Hearts to Women in Pregnancy Crisis
Most often, hidden behind an abortion on request is a tragedy unknown to everyone else around.
If we want Romanians and Romania to have a future, we need to support women in pregnancy crisis. That way, these women will choose what is best for their children.
To give life and to support the life of your neighbor were long-established values in the history of Romanians. Only the communist ideology valued and demanded the killing of one’s fellowman, whenever the latter was seen as an obstacle in the way of happiness. Communism made abortion legal, and then restricted abortion on request, ignoring both mother and child, in both cases, since its only priority was ideology – namely, the need of labor. Therefore, what we plead for is not a ban on abortion, but knowing the reality and opening up our hearts.
Let us not be indifferent. Let us not pretend we know nothing about the turmoil that precedes abortion.
Pregnancy crisis is an extremely painful place to be – and when surrounded by ignorance and indifference, it is even harder to bear. One wonders where the responsibility of the child’s father is. Where is friend support? Where is family love, when a woman sees that “No one supports me, no one is near me, and no one offers me any other option besides abortion”?
Let us open up our hearts to these tiny beating hearts – the hearts of children who need love and care and who, as grown-ups, will in turn care for the ones who made it possible for them to come into this life.
To hold a child who may have ended up in a biological waste bin, to enjoy their smile and babbling, and think about the good they might do to the humanity when they grow up – these are the things that make us feel confident that this is the way of the future.
Let us love the mother and the child!
Join the Pro-life March and bear witness to the value and majesty of life! Come show your respect and cherishing towards the women who fight to protect their children’s life – and support them!
Alexandra Nadane
President, Studenți pentru viață [Students for Life] Association
March 1, 2018
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We hereby repeat our last year’s call towards the society, to develop support tools for women in pregnancy crises, by:
- providing indemnities to women after their 14th week of pregnancy, in order to help them cover the special needs coming up during pregnancy;
- setting up help centers where women in pregnancy crisis can request free psychological counseling as well as help from social workers specialized in pregnancy crises;
- creating a legal framework that allows pregnant women who consider themselves unable of child-rearing to put their children up for adoption right after birth – based on the system of adopting during pregnancy, practiced in the U.S., the UK, and Australia;
- stepping up the value of the members of the society involved in adoptions, in order to do away with the mentalities that look down upon adopted children, adoptive parents, and in particular, upon mothers or parents who put their children up for adoption when they consider that they cannot take proper care of them;
- making it legally possible for miscarrying mothers to inter their children, on request – as well as get a proper religious service during the interment, as it is done in the case of non-christened children who died shortly after being born.
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This Pro-life March is at its 8th national edition.
Abroad, the Pro-life March was held for the first time in Washington, D.C., on January 22, 1974.
In Romania, it was first organized in Timișoara, in 2008.
The evolution of the number of Pro-life March organizing cities in recent years:
2013 – 23 cities in Romania;
2014 – 40 cities in Romania;
2015 – 79 cities (77 in Romania and 2 in the Republic of Moldova);
2016 – 130 cities (110 in Romania and 20 in the Republic of Moldova);
2017 – 287 (138 in Romania and 149 cities and towns in the Republic of Moldova).
The Pro-life March is non-confessional and non-political.
Its local organizers are independent of one another.
In Bucharest, the 2018 “A Pro-life World” march is organized by the Studenți pentru viață Association and will take place on Saturday, March 24.
The participants will gather at Unirii Park, at 11:00 a.m. The march will start off at 12:00 noon, and will go from Unirii Park to Tineretului Park.
The march will be followed by a live concert, titled “Live for Life” (Tineretului Park, Șincai Entrance, 01:00 p.m.), given by Aurelian Temișan and Feedback Band, and presented by Ioana Picoș.
Source: Studenți pentru viață
