Priorities:

After this amazing weekend, celebrating the 4^th of July, I want to tell you a story. Last Friday, another intern of this organization and myself were counseling a young 21 year old girl at Queens’ office. I can’t stop praying for her because she is in a difficult situation. She is Muslim, her parents too, but her boyfriend is Catholic. Her parents don’t know about the pregnancy, not even about the existence of that relationship. She kept on talking about how difficult her circumstances are, and if her parents ever find out, she would be in serious trouble. So she wanted to have an abortion right away.

And this whole situation made me think about priorities; every single person has different order of priorities. And when it comes to this story (and to abortion in general) we have to consider, on the one hand, what is preventing the women from having the baby, and on the other hand, the death of her child. And what we try to explain to them is that having an abortion is never the solution. I think that is preferable for your parents to be mad at you for the rest of their lives, than to not being able to life with yourself for the rest of yours.

I think this girl was perfectly aware of what it means to have an abortion, and she really didn’t want to do it. But maybe because of the pressure, her parents came first, and therefore the baby wasn’t a priority. So all there is left for us to do is pray for her… Let’s keep on doing it!

Fátima.