Welcome to SAN ANTONIO

This time i am not writing from our humble home at Austin but form a resort in San Antonio. I would love to say that this city welcomed us with opened arms, but I wouldn’t be entirely honest… The first day we got here (on Tuesday at noon) everything seemed to come out the wrong way!

I wont’t explain the details because it would take too long. But only saying that the so called “Oven of America” decided to take a vacation already says something. We had to run from the hotel to the bus stop for more than 15 minutes and we arrived there as we had fallen into the pool! That day we couldn’t stop laughing! Because after our bath we had to take a freezing bus ride that toke us more than an hour. I sincerely believe that the abuse of the AC in the public transport should be penalized! Whatever.

The really cause why I was writing this blog is the reason we came to San Antonio. Ladies and gentlemen, you have to be informed that a new office is going to be established in this lovely city! Because, I have to admit that after this shinny day and the river walk, San Antonio may have gained some points after all.

Yesterday we did our homework. Maria and Clara were at the office while Carolina and I went to a couple of meetings with other people who is doing something similar as we do. People from the lifehouse, we are not alone!! I think that the number of planned parenthoods here is about 11, but there are also some organizations who offer also a free pregnancy test and some other tipe of counseling. Wherever we go there's always good people with initiative, never forget that!

We are leaving this weird city (not as weird as Austin though) tomorrow. Although, I am quite sure that in not a long time you will have again some news about it.

The bill passed!

This blog is about how the situation is going in Texas. After some months of intensive fight with arguments and testimonies, words and prayers, crossing opinions, people who listen and people who don't, people who talks to you and people who shouts... after all of this blue and orange campaign (now I cannot walk down the street without relating the blue and orange clothes with pro-life or pro-choice people!) the bill has passed!

Last Friday night 19 senators from Texas government voted yes and 11 of them voted no. That's why it passed. So now we only have to wait to see how it is going to be applied. Time will show us!

El mayor gesto de amor por parte de una madre

 Cuando vienen las chicas a la oficina con un nino en el vientre, hechas un manojo de nervios y una unica decision en mente (el aborto, por supuesto) les decimos que al contrario de lo que piensan, el aborto no es la unica salida a su embarazo.

- Sweetheart, right now you don't have one but three ways out of your situation: parenting, abortion and adoption.

Siempre tienen sus razones por las que no pueden criar al nino (unas mas poderosas que otras), por eso vienen a abortar, el aborto les asusta, pero la adopcion les repele. "Como podria dar a mi hijo a unos extranos?" La adopcion es algo que siempre les asusta, algo que muchas ni siquiera se plantean por parecer imposible. Hay que tener mucho coraje y sobre todo mucho amor para que despues de llevar a tu hijo en el vientre durante nueve meses, despues de quererlo y cuidarlo por ese tiempo, despues de asumir que ese nino es tu hijo, darlo en adopcion porque sabes que es lo mejor para el.


El otro dia vino a la oficina una chica que temblaba de los nervios que llevaba encima. Habia pasado ya los treinta, y venia por lo mismo que vienen todas: estaba embarazada. Me confeso que su exnovio era una mala persona, que ella no podia criar a un nino con el. Tanto ella como el tenian trabajo, pero tras un largo rato de charla me confeso que ella tampoco podria criar al nino sola. "He estado bebiendo mucho" me dijo "y si le he hecho dano al nino? No puedo seguir haciendole dano, por eso no puedo criarlo yo. No puedo." Me hablaba con el corazon en la mano y lagrimas en los ojos.

"Hablame de la adopcion."

Esta mujer llevaba mucho amor dentro. Dar tu hijo a unos extranos porque sabes que tendra mejores oportunidades con ellos que contigo es un gran acto de humildad. Todavia no sabe definitivamente si lo va a dar en adopcion o no, asi que necesita muchos rezos por nuestra parte!

Ademas, el otro dia en el Capitolio nos encontramos con un chico que ensenaba orgulloso la siguiente pancarta. Tenia 21 semanas cuando nacio, todo el mundo pensaba que moriria. Aun asi, su madre (por sus propias razones) lo dio en adopcion. Lo que mas me impresiono fue ver a su hermano (el hijo biologico de los padres que lo habian adoptado) con otra pancarta.

Sorry por la falta de comas, enyes y signos de exclamacion... a falta de ordenadores, buenas son las computadoras americanas!

Testimonies

"I got pregnant at age 20. Of course, my mother wanted me to abort. Still, though I had a hard time deciding if I was going to have an abortion or not, I was lucky to realize at time that this was not the best for me. So I did not abort. However, I used to think "What if a girl aborts or not? It’s just a decision that has to be made by the women who is pregnant”. In fact, I supported a friend when she decided to carry out an abortion, because I knew it was what she most wanted at that time.

Not long after having my child, I was invited to a dinner at which I started to talk about this topic with someone I met in there. She showed me a small figure of how mi child had been when she was 10 weeks. I was stunned. This was not the mass of tissue that I had been told. She showed me some other sonograms, images... but nothing matched with what I thought it was

We are a person from the very moment of the conception. That's what I understood that night and that’s what I want you to understand now. I would support the abortion if it was only a harmless decision to be made. But it is not.”

 

This is a sketch of one of the testimonies we heard on Monday in the Capitol. Where people was invited to present their point of view and own experiences to the senate’s before they had to vote the bill.

Is it really pro-choice?

I'm seated right now at the capitol of one of the most conservative’s state of the USA: Texas. The situation here now is pretty bustle. The government wants to pass a law whose main consequence would be closing more than half of Texas abortion facilities. For this reason, many people in the most liberal city in this state, Austin, have decided to stand up against this law.


They call themselves pro-choice, which at first shocked me a lot, because it is a term that I think fits very well our organization. It reminded me of the women who come to the office thinking that the only way out of their situation is abortion, and go out seeing that other alternatives can make them even happier. And yet here are all these women dressed in orange (pro-life color is blue) defending their power of choice.

 

From my time in Texas I have been talking to people on both sides. And my conclusion was that the ways of thinking in one and on the other side are so different that they don’t understand each other.

Yesterday I was just talking to a friend about this. At first, it seems that the argument of the pro-choice is the most convincing. Many of these women do not want to want an abortion, but to make the decision to abort or not. However, although they are right in the fact that we have the right to take decisions, they are wrong to say that being your own body that aborted, they own the decision to abort or not. A woman does not abort herself but aborts another person.

We were thinking about that when we saw this woman with the following banner:

A step closer to them

What do the pregnant girls we meet have in common? Fear. For the time I’ve been here I have always seen that shadow behind the looking in their eyes. There was a women who had no job, neither had her boyfriend. I knew a girl, who was being pressured by her partner to have an abortion, although, as she said: “she was going to kill the baby”. I met a lady with three lovely children who had no resources, neither the time, to rise the forth one because she was studying for getting a better job. Someone told me about an underage girl who didn’t even know how to take care of a kid. And these are not only stories written in this sheet of paper, this are real stories of people that could be you.

Each woman has a different situation with a different way of going through it. Each girl that comes is beautiful and precious; even more than we are, because they are mothers. I heard once that “we are not here to help the babies but their mothers”. They need the hand of a friend to get out of the situation they are living.

Will we be able to do it?

The answer are only two words: loving them.

Life

Hi everybody!

My name is Bea, I come from Barcelona and I am currently studying medicine. I arrived here last Friday, and the only thing I can think of now that I look back on everything that has happened is how much I have learnt. I came to New York, the city where the dreams come true, with great expectations. Which so far have had to change to some real ones. For instance, I thought our task should be saving the life of the babies that were not going to see the light and feel the air. But we are not here for that. It’s all about love. Every mother loves her child. That’s why being mother, having a baby, is such a blessing.

I hope my staying here and this experience help me getting closer to those mothers and their children. Today has been the first day that I have seen a sonography… the best part of it was the looking in the mothers eyes, even when we found out she was going to have twins!

Life is the most beautiful gift we have.