MERCHANTVILLE – “We’re not just saving lives, but saving souls.”
Ramona Trevino, 40 Days for Life outreach director, visited Saint Peter Parish on Oct. 14 to share her journey of God’s grace and redemption and encourage those advocating for the right to life.
To an audience of 40 that included Bishop Joseph Williams, Trevino spoke of her four years as a manager at a Planned Parenthood abortion referral facility in Sherman, Texas.
She admitted that when she first took the job in 2007, she was “insulated from the realities of abortion” – and that she believed Planned Parenthood only served to provide affordable healthcare to women who were underinsured and in poverty.
At the same time, “I adopted the company’s mentality that every woman has the right to choose for herself,” because it’s their body, she explained.
The baptized and self-described “cultural Catholic” didn’t personally agree with the mentality, “but I wanted the job,” Trevino continued, to provide for herself, her husband and their two children.
As she began to see girls as young as 12 come into the facility for contraception and abortion referrals, though, her mindset shifted.
“If this is about choice, why aren’t we first focused on the side of life?” she remembered asking herself.
With every visit, referral and phone call, “I found myself slipping away,” Trevino said. “I suppressed reality, and compromised what I knew was true – that there was human life in the womb – for the sake of an opportunity and a nametag to prove my worth.”
A turning point came in December 2010, when, flipping through radio stations in her car, she came across the local Catholic radio station, 910 Radio Guadalupe, for the first time.
“I had no idea Catholic radio existed,” she said, noting that the station’s discussion at the time was Planned Parenthood, abortion and contraception, with women calling in to share their stories of their own abortions.
“Hearing these women talk about their grief and pain that they carried for so many years, it hurt me to think I was contributing to that,” Trevino remarked.
The next spring, as 40 Days for Life started – a campaign of prayer, fasting, outreach and vigil outside abortion facilities – Trevino continued to feel God’s call to conversion.
Seeing the fervent witness of those praying outside the place she worked, she struck up relationships with these advocates for life.
Asking them to pray for her and her struggle, “I experienced divine intervention; all the scales fell from my eyes,” she remembered.
As Trevino began returning to church every week, praying the rosary, and going to confession, “I looked at the world in a different way, and felt so much hope for the first time,” she said.
During Easter week, she was the only one in the office when a 20-year-old woman came in for a pregnancy test.
“She started crying when I told her she was pregnant,” Trevino recalled, as she recounted more of the girl’s story; she had an older child, and her unborn baby’s abusive father was in jail.
Trevino next told the girl her own personal story of teen pregnancy and broken relationships, and the fact that she, herself, had been a first-time mother at 16, in an abusive relationship. She left her partner, but now had a beautiful daughter.
After “the Holy Spirit spoke through me, to tell the girl to make a choice for life,” Trevino said, the girl stood up, hugged her and said she was keeping her child.
“That was the moment of redemption from God,” Trevino remarked, her voice cracking.
That same day, she quit her job, and three months later, spoke at a 40 Days for Life rally to celebrate the facility’s closure.
Expressing pride in the work of pro-life advocates, and everything they do to bring witness to life in their vigils, prayers and advocacy, Trevino reminded all “that we have to be faithful, and trust that God is answering prayers.”
The 40 Days for Life is currently in its fall campaign of vigils, prayers, and outreach, which runs until Nov. 1.
Since the campaign began in 2007, reaching more than 1,000 cities in 63 countries, over 26,000 lives have been saved, and almost 200 abortion centers have closed.
At the end of the evening, Bishop Williams gave the final blessing, thanking Trevino for her Holy Spirit-filled testimony, and affirming that God “is the Lord and giver of life.” He expressed confidence that, through Trevino and those gathered, the pro-life message is reaching the next generation.
Dr. Michael Sims, director of the Diocese of Camden’s Office of Life & Justice Ministries, called Trevino’s presentation “an inspiring story of grace. In noticing the signposts of people that pointed her on the path to redemption, she had the faith to leave the past behind and lift people up out of their own brokenness.”
“I hope that those in the Diocese engaged in 40 Days for Life continue, like Trevino, to be prayerful witnesses of life,” he said.
For more information on the 40 Days for Life campaign, visit 40daysforlife.com.
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