Kigali, 04 August, 2024 / 11:34 PM
Laurence, aged 17, was scheduled for abortion a day before she met Human Life International (HLI) Rwanda that convinced her to choose life instead.
HLI shared with ACI Africa the photo of Laurence (not her real name) on a hospital bed, with a staff of the pro-life movement holding her new-born baby, Keilla.
According to the pro-life organization, Laurence had been impregnated by a pro-abortion advocate, who went ahead to pay for the baby’s abortion.
In a report shared with ACI Africa on Tuesday, July 30, HLI says that “a providentially timed school workshop by Human Life International Rwanda opened Laurence’s eyes to the truth about abortion, and she chose life for her preborn baby.”
With her abortion already set for the following day, Laurence approached the HLI Rwanda team for help.
The schoolgirl said that she wanted to keep her baby, and that she was also interested in pursuing “a more spiritual, chaste life.”
“Having been recruited to promote contraceptives among her peers by the pro-abortion advocate who fathered and then paid for her baby’s abortion, Laurence was in need of support on several levels,” HLI says, adding that the entity in Rwanda helped Laurence tell her mother about her preborn baby and elicit a commitment to help with the child so that Laurence could return to school after the birth.
HLI Rwanda assisted Laurence with medical fees, baby supplies, and went ahead to negotiate a leave of absence from, and eventual return to school for her.
Rwanda has one of highest population densities in sub-Saharan Africa, a situation that HLI says makes the country a favorite target of population control proponents.
HLI Rwanda Director, Aloys Ndengeye, says that in Rwanda, more than 65 percent of the populace is under the age of 30, making schools in the country a popular place for those promoting contraceptives and abortion to push their “culture of death” practices.
Ndengeye explains how Health Development Initiative Rwanda (HDI) is mobilizing abortion and contraceptive use among youth under the pretext of reducing teen pregnancies.
He says that the pro-abortion ideology is thriving in the “predominantly Christian, highly Catholic” country where abortion is illegal.
Like the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), HDI makes a practice of regularly visiting the area’s public schools, Ndengeye says, adding that the abortion culture in Rwanda has resulted in “increasing venereal diseases, sexualizing our youth, and killing innocent preborn babies through abortion.”
Dr. Brian Clowes, HLI’s Director of Education and Research, sees Laurence’s story as representative of many young women who have been influenced by the deadly messaging of population control proponents.
“Laurence was faced with an unexpected pregnancy in her native Rwanda. The only option offered to her by Western population control groups was abortion. But then she heard a pro-life presentation by Human Life International the day before her abortion was scheduled, and she chose life for her baby” Clowes says, and adds, “We are strongly reminded of the Biblical wisdom of Proverbs 18:17, which says ‘He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.’”
He says that the task of all of the pro-life groups all over the world is “to offer life-affirming options that the groups marketing abortion deliberately do not mention.”
Ndengeye added that Laurence “is now happy being a mother, and she is thankful to Human Life International for saving her baby, a girl she named Keilla.”
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