Nearly 2,000 of the pro-life faithful convened recently at a downtown convention center for the local diocese’s first-ever bi-national, pro-life conference. The main thrust of the conference was to encourage Hispanic Catholics to stay rooted in the values of the church, not the values of a more liberal America – which condones abortion.
Prominent Catholics, like Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted, also want to build pro-life leaders amongst the country’s growing Latino population, who he said are the future of the Catholic Church.
Conference attendees were mainly from the Southwest and Northern Mexico, but some came from as far away as Argentina and Spain. The halls were lined with pictures of the Lady of Guadalupe and little dolls, the size of small fetuses. There was also a pro-life musical, a pro-life concert, and several celebrity guests, including Karyme Lozano, the Mexican singer and actress.
Carmen Portela, director of the Family Catechesis Department for the Phoenix Diocese, led a talk called “Integration, Not Assimilation.”
“You learn the good values of the dominant country,” Portela said. “But you keep the good values of your culture as well. And you don’t assimilate into a culture of death.”
Conference organizers like Portela are addressing a population that, in terms of abortion, tends to say one thing and do another.
Studies show that Latinos identify themselves as being more pro-life than the general public. At the same time, Hispanic women account for a disproportionally high amount of abortions, as much as 25% in 2008, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Portela and other Catholic leaders explain this trend in two ways: One, immigrants tend to focus on economic survival more than religion when they first come to this country. Two, they said Latinos are “targeted” by abortion providers.
“I work in a neighborhood in LA where there are nine abortion centers in a one-mile radius, and that is a Hispanic neighborhood,” said Astrid Bennett Gutierrez, the Executive Director for Los Angeles Pregnancy Services. “So you see the clear targeting of Hispanics, where there might be a vulnerable population because of poverty.”
One organization that has come under attack for its so-called targeted abortion services is Planned Parenthood.
Rachel Chanes, with Arizona’s Planned Parenthood, said they market their services to everyone, but especially to those who are low income and who don’t have access to medical care.
“Sponsors of anti-choice campaigns, like the ones who gathered here in Phoenix, are using divisive language to inhibit medical care,” Chanes said.
Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted has taken a particularly hardline stance on this issue.
Last year, he ex-communicated a nun who authorized an abortion she said was necessary to save the life of the mother at a local Catholic hospital. He then stripped the hospital of its Catholic affiliation.
On other issues – notably Arizona's immigration laws – Olmsted has come under criticism for not speaking out in defense of immigrants. But he said the pro-life issue comes first.
“The thing is, if we don’t defend the unborn child, then we don’t have an immigrant,” Olmsted said. “If we don’t defend the unborn child, then we don’t have these other rights – because they haven’t gotten the first right, which is to be alive.”
Currently. one-third of all Catholics in the U.S. are Hispanic. And Latinas have a fertility rate that far exceeds women of other ethnicities. For these reasons, Olmsted sees them as a critical base in the church’s pro-life fight.
“Because those women who will be bearing children in the next 10, 20, 30 years are largely Hispanic,” Olmsted said. “So we really need to reach them. And help them understand the great vocation of being a mother.”
Olmsted is calling on other dioceses across the country to have more pro-life conferences that engage the church's Hispanic parishioners. He also plans to host more in Phoenix, one at least every two years.
