Dr. Gádor Joya, a pediatrician in Spain, has outraged abortion activists the world over. What hasinstigated such ire? Dr. Joya simply offers mothers seeking elective abortions free ultrasounds in a van outside of abortion businesses. Through the group “Life Ambulance Project,” Dr. Joya operates a mobile ultrasound unit and offers information and resources to mothers outside Madrid abortion mills. Anti-Life activists have roundly condemned her altruism.
One abortion activist claimed what Dr. Joya was doing was “very immoral,” telling the Independent, “This is purely just an attempt to intimidate them into not having an abortion. Their tactics are cruel and inhumane. They might think abortion is inhumane but what they are putting those women through – stuffing them into the van – is inhumane.”
Pro-Lifers don’t “think abortion is inhumane”; they recognize that abortion is. Comparing the horrific violence of abortion, in which a living human being is crushed, dismembered, and mutilated to death, to a charity organization offering mothers free ultrasounds reveals how absurd the anti-Life position has become.
The Pro-Life efforts have not been clandestine, and Dr. Joya has spoken publicly about her reasons for the volunteer work she does. She said recently, “Precisely because I have been doing this, I know what has been hidden from these women. Most of them, when they receive the information and hear the heartbeat, decide to go forward with their pregnancies.”
The abortion industry is notorious for lying to mothers about prenatal development and withholding information from mothers seeking elective abortion. Groups like Dr. Joya’s give mothers access to scientifically accurate information about their preborn child.
Dr. Joya, who also serves as a deputy in the Madrid regional assembly, received censure from her colleagues. One colleague’s questioning of Dr. Joya’s motives demonstrated absurdity: “To dissuade or to torture them? Because [Joya] says that many women decide not to have an abortion when they hear the heartbeat. How many women is that? And what happens to them? What is the psychological and emotional cost for these women?”
Attraction to abortion disintegrates as soon as mothers have access to resources to make an informed decision about their health care and the Life of their preborn child. The façade under which anti-Life politicians operate depends on withholding the facts necessary to make an irreversible abortion decision, a matter of Life and death. Committed to abortion at any cost, many anti-Life activists and politicians continue to ignore the grief and agony of mothers who regret their abortions and act as though informed consent is optional.
In a tweet responding to some of the backlash, Dr. Joya explained, “What I am proudest of as a doctor is having helped many women to become mothers when they were on the point of aborting. Yes, I have worked for a project aimed at defending the Right to Life and dignity of all human beings. And I will continue doing it wherever I am.”
News outlets report that Dr. Joya is no longer working for the public health system. The reports do not indicate whether the change was a direct result of her Pro-Life outreach.
Responding to criticism, Spanish Pro-Lifers have stated that, unlike the abortion industry withholding information, Pro-Life advocates have nothing to gain from giving mothers an opportunity to see their child in the womb. The abortion industry profits from the slaughter of innocent preborn babies by means of coercion and financial incentive.
Katherine O’Brien, of British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a group that promotes abortion, opined to the Independent, “It was completely misguided and profoundly insulting to suggest that providing an ultrasound will dissuade women from ending a pregnancy.”
If Dr. Joya’s work is “misguided and profoundly insulting” why has she saved lives? The fact remains that there are mothers seeking elective abortions who feel they have no other choice. Instead of assuming that death is their only option, we should offer them another way and a chance to choose Life.
The outrage among abortion advocates sparked by the simple and effective Pro-Life work in Spain demonstrates the importance of laws like Texas’s Sonogram Law. Pro-Life laws in Texas require not only that mothers receive an ultrasound but also that she be given a 24-hour waiting period before undergoing an abortion. The abortion industry despises ultrasounds because ultrasounds provide a window to the womb through which mothers can see the humanity of their preborn child, then measure and hear their child’s beating heart.
Every mother deserves to know who her child is—and that there are people willing to help her choose Life—before undergoing a life-ending procedure that can never be undone.
