By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Just as various sorts of mothers approach abortion clinics with their preborn babies’ lives in the balance, various sorts of pro-life women are outside the clinics to try to redirect the moms’ footsteps and their futures.
A longtime sidewalk counselor told The Wanderer that while ultrasound images are “fabulous” to persuade mothers to choose life for their babies, it’s even more important for the women to win their own interior spiritual battle.
Victory in this battle will protect both mother and baby, said bilingual Arizonan Luz Fuenzalida, a native of Chile who became a U.S. citizen.
Fuenzalida said she often makes contact with abortion-inclined Latinas outside the abortuaries, who also may be illegal immigrants and have ceased to practice the Catholic faith.
Illegal immigration leads to a variety of serious moral problems, she said during a March 4 interview at a Phoenix pizza restaurant while she drank only a small pot of tea as a self-imposed lenten fast.
She showed The Wanderer a copy of a letter she wrote warning of how illegal immigration can lead to immoral living and endanger souls — a letter she had provided to some Catholic clergy, including a few U.S. prelates.
Her life-saving approach on the sidewalk can be seen as suitable, although other pro-life counselors may avoid a religious approach at abortuaries.
Women who have seen ultrasounds of their babies still might return the next day for abortions, Fuenzalida said, because of factors such as continued pressure from the babies’ fathers to abort, but women who are renewed spiritually don’t come back.
If the mother is from a Catholic background, Fuenzalida has a list of bilingual priests she can call to provide an immediate Confession to begin her spiritual renewal, because this literally is “a life-or-death situation.” She said she also takes the woman for an ultrasound.
“The majority of the mothers I meet are away from the Church, and they’re away from God. . . . . They’re not receiving the sacraments, and, what’s worse, many of them have family who are in the same condition. The need for evangelization is huge,” she said.
The mother approaching the abortuary “usually feels abandoned from every angle,” Fuenzalida said. “We have to realize that abortion is a spiritual battle. If we truly believe this is real, then we will try to reach deep into her soul. If we can accomplish this, the baby’s life will be saved.
“Our main objective should always be to touch the mother’s soul. At this point, initially, it is not about the baby,” she said. “The mother finds herself in a very painful state. She’s thinking basically about herself. She feels used. The baby at this point is an obstacle in her life, an obstacle to achieving her goals, her future.
“Usually the father is willing to pay for killing their baby, and that in itself is more than painful,” she said. “It’s a very callous attitude or offer that wounds her even further.”
Earlier in the interview, Fuenzalida said, “The ultrasound is a fabulous machine, but it doesn’t compare with Confession, with a sacrament, or even with a blessing from a priest. I have never had a mother that comes back the next day to abort, after speaking with a Catholic priest.”
She said she’ll offer to talk with the mother’s parents if that’s a feasible approach to help with any problems. And, the Chilean native said, she keeps in touch with the mothers and saved babies if they wish to. One of those babies is 27 years old now.
“I try to stay in touch with my turnarounds. I stay in touch with my babies. My main purpose is that these mothers reconcile with God and anyone else who’s around my babies,” she said. “I want them to be strong Catholics and a good example for the baby.”
Because there are only “a couple of minutes” between the time a mother parks and walks into the clinic, Fuenzalida has to engage her attention quickly.
“I usually say, ‘Good morning, I have some information for you. Will you come and talk to me? I have information they will not give you inside’,” she said.
“Do you believe in God, who created life?”, Fuenzalida said she asks. “. . . Does He make mistakes? Did they tell you abortion kills the baby but doesn’t kill your conscience? Did they tell you that you can die from the abortion? And then you’ll be facing God for all eternity.”
Fuenzalida told The Wanderer: “It’s important to mention that the ‘counseling’ they give these women when they make their appointments is diabolical counseling. They make it sound as if abortion is the only solution for them. So the mother feels desperate. They need to be hugged, they need to be held, they need tangible solutions, such as, ‘I’ll take your baby.’
“They’re in fear. Many of them are threatened by the father: ‘If you don’t have the abortion, I’ll never see you again’.”
However, Fuenzalida added, if the mother does have the abortion, the father won’t stay with her anyway.
The mothers “have a pile of issues . . . they don’t know how to solve,” she said.
Because the effects of abortion ripple through society, Fuenzalida said, priests should speak from the pulpit about needing “people to evangelize their relatives, their friends. It’s necessary in today’s world. It’s no coincidence the Holy Father is calling us to evangelize and to be merciful. These women are being deceived at the clinics by women who are trained to lie in order to sell the abortion.”
Fuenzalida said she prepares spiritually with Mass, the rosary, and other prayers before arriving at the clinic.
“I’ve never had a mother who regretted” giving birth, she said, adding that some of those mothers regularly go to eucharistic adoration now.
“The mother needs our love, our support, our advice, and she needs above all to return to God . . . and we sidewalk counselors desperately need the prayers of the prayer warriors that surround us,” she said.
Fuenzalida added: “Planned Parenthood and the abortion clinics want lots of casual sex. They are pushing their contraception everywhere to anybody they talk to, and even to our children in the schools. We need to realize the majority of these abortions are occurring because of the failure rate of contraception.
“The more the marital act is abused, the more abortions,” she added. “This affects our kids’ studies, their grades . . . and their future. The more ‘lust,’ the more money” for PP and the clinics.
Drawing on her experience with Latinas she encounters not only at abortuaries but also through other social ministries, Fuenzalida said she wrote a letter explaining the serious harm that illegal immigration causes to individuals and families.
“A number of priests have thanked me and agreed with me. Others were happy I wrote it, and said they were not aware of this side of the problem. . . . Personally, I face this wherever I go in my different ministries,” she said.
One bishop who read the letter “was very supportive,” she said. However, another bishop she highly respected was concerned that the information “would cause problems, and it would be best not to mention it to anyone.”
That bishop is known in his diocese for favoring illegal immigration.
However, Fuenzalida said, not doing anything aggravates the problem. “These souls need our intervention. . . . Living in adultery, living in fornication is affecting the children. . . . It’s detrimental to everyone’s souls. It is something that needs to be addressed and corrected.”
In her letter, she explains her social awareness because her father, a physician and surgeon in Santiago, Chile, had “started free ‘ambulatory clinics’ to serve the poor in Chile, which then expanded throughout Latin America. Later, they were a model for Mission of Mercy in this country. My father received an award in the late 1960s from the UN for this work. My father was highly influenced by his cousin, St. Alberto Hurtado, SJ.”
Fuenzalida wrote that she sees “the following scenario play out over and over again” — a Hispanic married man arrives in the U.S. for economic reasons, starts a second family with a different woman here, then ceases to send money home to his original family because of his new obligations.
After a while, she wrote, a son from down south arrives to look for his father but feels betrayed by discovering the new, second family, and he leaves.
“Having no money and no family in the U.S., embittered, he is easy prey to a life of crime, drugs, and gang activities,” Fuenzalida wrote. “Soon, the real wife and mother arrives in search of her husband and her son. She often has the rest of her children with her. She then realizes what happened and feels abandoned. She does not speak the language and has nobody to help her.
“Now she feels the need to ‘shack up’ with a man in order to survive here with her children. I then meet her at the abortion clinic when she gets pregnant and feels that she cannot afford another child. What started as an effort to raise the economic status of a family ends up further destroying that family, and still more adultery and abortion!”
Fuenzalida mentioned to The Wanderer how easily illegal immigrants cross the border. Although much is said about needing walls on the border, she added, many cross by using tunnels.
In addition to women turning to prostitution to raise money, she wrote, “Many of their younger children are molested/abused by the series of ‘friends’ of Mom or pseudo-stepfathers who become involved in the children’s lives. Many mothers do not report this out of fear of being left alone, without any financial support.”
Family Disintegration
As for U.S. immigration laws, Fuenzalida wrote: “Calling our just laws unjust, and then defying them, leads to self-righteousness and further hostility, not humility and gratitude. Is it not a near occasion of sin to remain in a country illegally, knowing that you will be stealing free services that belong to others truly in need, while continuing to evade or refuse to pay fair taxes on what you make?
“Is it not wrong to live in adultery/fornication, even killing your child for economic convenience, while evading and breaking just laws? Furthermore, these parents are scandalizing their own children, who witness lying, cheating, and stealing as a way of life,” she wrote.
Noting that churches lock their own doors for protection, and that she has had to show proper documentation in her travels, Fuenzalida wrote:
“I firmly believe that illegal immigration leads to the disintegration of the family! Morally it does not work. There is a legal process to enter this country that does not destroy families; there is also a legal process for asylum and protection of true refugees. No wonder Jesus clearly said, ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.’
“Just laws need to be respected. Borders demarcate the sovereignty of the nation, just as walls mark the boundaries of the home; both should be respected. The rightful occupants should decide when, to whom, and how often the doors — or borders — are opened,” she wrote.
Fuenzalida concluded that “pursuing a solution to illegal immigration without Charity is wrong. Yet to encourage Charity for the illegal immigrant — and those seeking abortion — without Truth is deadly! The only answer is Charity and Truth. It does entail suffering — but without the cross there is no Resurrection.”
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