CV NEWS FEED // Catholic apologist and best-selling author Patrick Madrid gave a powerful response to a woman considering an abortion who called into his show on Relevant Radio.
“Alicia from Chicago” called into the Patrick Madrid Show earlier this month.
“I was looking for a sign today. I was randomly – this radio station came on, and I just started listening to it,” she said.
“And right now I am calling because I am actually on my way to get abortion pills at a clinic,” Alicia told Madrid. “And I truthfully don’t know what to do.”
She explained to him that she was pregnant with her third child. “I just don’t want to make life any worse on them,” she said referring to her older two children. “Or more hard on myself or my husband.”
Alicia stated that she was “sort of raised in the Catholic faith.” Both of her parents had passed away, “one from cancer, one from suicide.”
“So, I don’t really have a support system there,” she said. “I’m in my last year of school at university and I just feel like now is really probably one of the worst times that this could happen at. And I just don’t know what to do.”
Madrid was immediately welcoming and warm to the caller. “The first thing I’d like to say, Alicia, is that I’m so glad that you took a moment to call,” he said.
He asked her the ages of her kids.
“I have a two-year-old and a seven-year-old,” she answered.
“So you are busy, you got your hands full,” the host observed. “No doubt about that.”
Madrid is a father of 11 children, and he told Alicia that he and his wife had felt similarly “busy” when they were raising a young family:
But one thing that really struck me, and I wonder if you had the same experience, was that as busy and as focused as we were on the first child, our son, when the second child came along, it didn’t change anything. It just made it better.
We were about as busy as we had been before, and we had another little beautiful baby to love and get to know.
And what I experienced, Alicia, was that it’s not like you’re dividing – let’s say you got a pie, and you’re now cutting it in half – it’s like it multiples. Your time multiples, your love multiplies.
Alicia replied saying that when she had her second baby, she noticed how it changed her “oldest’s quality of life.”
“He was being told he had to be quiet more, as we weren’t able to do as many things with him because … we had the baby to care for,” Alicia said. “I just saw how much it changed that for him, and I am really worried about what that would do for my oldest and my youngest … and me having that time for them.”
“I understand that sentiment,” Madrid said. “My experience is that love multiplies. It doesn’t divide. It’s not parceled out in smaller and smaller groups.”
He continued, “I can’t help but think about, in this decision that you are making right now, that in order for those things to happen, somebody has to die.”
Alicia questioned that. “Planned Parenthood [says] it’s just cells dividing,” said, adding that she was only five weeks along. “But I can’t help but feel like it is a life, or that it isn’t ‘just a pregnancy’ as they say,” she added.
“Planned Parenthood, of course, is in the business of making money by doing abortions,” Madrid pointed out:
So naturally, they’re going to say anything they can to keep that money going. We’re all a clump of cells. You and I are both a clump of cells. We just look different now than we did when we were that age.
“That life in you is a human being,” the host emphasized. “It’s a son or daughter. Somebody who God created.”
He asked Alicia if she spent time in prayer thinking, “Is it really the right thing to do to kill an innocent person – which is what abortion does – in order for my other children to have more toys or something else like that?”
The young mother said that she had read and prayed a lot, “just asking God for a sign, for something.”
“We have a lot of people praying for you right now, Alicia,” Madrid noted. “Lots of people listening right now are maybe even on their knees praying for you.”
“Think of it this way,” he said. “You asked for a sign. I don’t think you would be calling if you didn’t deep down inside realize there’s something really wrong with having an abortion.”
“That’s your conscience speaking to you,” he added. “And that’s true. The voice of God is speaking to you through your conscience, saying don’t do this.”
Madrid acknowledged that there may be difficulties for her ahead. “But nothing would be so terrible that we could say, ‘Let’s kill this little one so that we could avoid a difficult time.’”
“I’d rather go through a difficult time than to kill one of my own children,” Madrid said. “A million times over.”
“And how would you feel later when your son or daughter asks you, ‘Mommy, did you ever have an abortion?’” he asked her. “How would your kids feel about knowing that their mom, whom they love, who loves them, actually killed one of their siblings?”
Madrid referred to the Scripture verse Matthew 6:33, saying “God will give you everything you need… Put first the Kingdom of Heaven, and everything else will be added unto you.”
“Do the right thing, always put Jesus first, always put the truth first, and everything else will fall into place,” he said:
Imagine yourself a year from now, two years from now, looking into that face of the little baby boy or girl that you’re carrying inside you right now, and just trying to imagine, “What would it be like without you?” And you’ll never have to wonder about that because you’ll have that baby if you make that decision to give life to your child.
Imagine when he or she is graduating from high school or getting married, and you’re looking with so much love at that son or daughter of yours and thinking of all the love and all the happiness and all the relationships and everything else that God has planned for you and your child.
“All that would go away if you were to go through with this,” he said. “I really hope you won’t.”
Having thought about it, Alicia told Madrid: “I don’t think I will. Thank you.”
She noted that she had never heard of Madrid’s radio show before. “I was looking for a sign … and I wasn’t expecting to find you today,” she said.
“I’m really glad you did,” Madrid replied. “I’m really glad that God had our paths cross this way.”
He referred Alicia to a Pregnancy Resource Center in her area that could help her prepare for the birth of her child.
“Thank you so much. I really needed this,” she said. “You really changed my heart, and changed my mind, and gave me what I needed to hear.”
“Thanks be to God,” Madrid said.
