WCR This Week

Lucie Tettamente

The reason the abortion message is not being heard and that babies continue to die is that the pro-life camp is judgmental.

Lucie Tettamente realized that following a discussion on abortion in the letters to the editor section of a Sherwood Park newspaper.

“We have two camps. We have the pro-choice and the pro-life and I think that the pro-life movement has been very frustrated in trying to get their message across,” she says.

“Why are there so many abortions in our country today? The word that was given to me was that the pro-choice appears to be more compassionate whereas the pro-life appears to be judgmental. I’m sure this is not meant to be that way, but that’s what I read in some of those letters.”

Tettamente made these comments at the monthly charismatic prayer breakfast Dec. 14 at Chateau Louis.

Later in her testimony, Tettamente asked her audience not to judge others.

“If there is anything that I would like to leave you with is please do not judge,” she said. “If we were able to let women know that we truly love them, that we don’t judge them, I’m sure that our pro-life movement would be more successful.”

An artist by profession, Tettamente is a member of Mi Casa Ministries which promotes devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe and is committed to spread the message of the Gospel. She is affiliated with Rachel’s Vineyard and Grief to Grace Ministries, offering healing to those suffering from the trauma of abortion and sexual abuse.

“How can we give a voice to someone like me who is post-abortive?” Tettamente asked.

She was 33 when she had an abortion. She was widowed with two sons aged 10 and 13. “My daughter was not created out of love. She was created out of fear. I was too fearful to fight. I was too fearful to say anything, too fearful to wake my children who were in the other room and that instance led up to an abortion.”

Tettamente said the shame that overcame her was paralyzing. “I was so afraid of being judged by my in-laws. I was afraid of telling my children. I chose to supress my maternal instincts and instead believed in a quick fix that the world was giving me.”

A WOMAN’S ISSUE

Shame tells a woman that her child is not wanted, Tettamente said at the breakfast. “As I was reading these letters to the editor I said, ‘It’s a woman’s issue.’ And the reason why it’s a woman’s issue is because we are not telling them what abortion is.”

If a woman goes to a counsellor concerning abortion right now, the counsellors are not allowed to dissuade her from having an abortion, to show her that there are other options or to talk about the risks.

“So all these women are going there not knowing. Are those women’s rights being protected?” she asked. “This is the one thing that pro-choice plays on. They say ‘We are protecting women’s rights. We are protecting their right to privacy.’”

The fact is they are putting pressure on young women who simply don’t know anything about abortion and its consequences, Tettamente said. “If they don’t know anything, they are going to think it’s a quick fix but in the end it’s absolutely horrific.”

Added Tettamente, “If you convince a woman that she is worthless, that her baby is not wanted, you fill her head with a whole bunch of lies, you create doubt in her mind and rip out the baby from her womb and destroy her womb, you have killed the nation.

“So it is a women’s issue. How do we protect our women?”

What happened to Tettamente that made her so insensitive to her child that she had an abortion? She comes from a family where sexual abuse and alcoholism ravaged one generation after another.

“Like everyone else, I became a victim and many in our family’s victims grew up to be perpetrators,” she said, tearfully. “I have to say to you I have come to a place today in my journey where my heart cries every time I hear of another incident, and I cry for both the perpetrator and the victim because it’s a wound that is not healed.

“The reason it has not healed is because it has been kept a secret. Secrecy is so damaging, and Satan loves secrets, and I’m sure there is plenty of those in every household.”

CRIPPLING SHAME

Shame is crippling and doesn’t allow one to move forward, Tettamente said. “When I asked God where were you when this stuff was happening to me and made me so vulnerable to abortion, his answer to me was, ‘I was with you the same way that I was with your little Jennifer when you chose to end her life. I couldn’t force you to love her.’”

Tettamente continued: “It’s horrific what happens in these abortion clinics. But women like me don’t dare say anything because we don’t want to expose our shame. This is allowed to go on because we are afraid of being judged.”

Post-abortive women lack the capacity for intimacy because there is no trust, she said. Tettamente, for instance, thought if she had placed her daughter for adoption, the baby would have suffered like she did.

It wasn’t until she met the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that Tettamente began to heal. She became involved in Church and began a close relationship with Our Lady.

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

“It’s through her that I came out of that pit in which I was for a long time and had the courage to do something about my own healing,” she said.

“Pray to Mother Mary. No prayer is insignificant to her,” she stressed. “She takes all prayers to her son. She is very interested in all of our lives and wants to bring her son into our lives. Today she is asking you to be people of life, to be life-giving, to open in all your heart and bring that message to every one you come in touch with.”