By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
Part III of a III part series.
MANAGUA, August 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After her famous abortion, “Rosita” and her family were transformed into stars of the pro-abortion movement worldwide. Network organizers spread the story to the foreign press, and after Catholic Church officials announced the automatic excommunication of anyone involved in the abortion, a petition drive was created in which people asked to receive an excommunication for supporting “Rosita’s” abortion.
In Spain, Network organizers claimed to have gathered over 30,000 signatures. The publicity culminated with a documentary made by two American filmmakers, which was aired on Cinemax and appeared in numerous film festivals, garnering awards and praise from the mainstream media.
Although the family of “Rosita” was hidden from the Nicaraguan public, the Network was not shy about transporting them to Chile in 2003, where they attempted to use the “hard case” to promote “therapeutic abortion” in that country. Their efforts, however, failed.
The truth about “Rosita’s” relationship with her stepfather finally began to emerge when the girl left home after a fight with her mother, who was reportedly jealous of her relationship with her husband. According to El Nuevo Diario, the Network then sent the girl to live in a shelter run by Network organization “Acción Ya” (Action Now). Her mother, infuriated at the situation, filed charges against Francisco Fletes Sanchez on July 31st, nineteen months after her daughter had given birth to his child.
The current Nicaraguan Family Minister, Rosa Adilia Vizcaya, has ordered the child to be removed from the shelter and transported to a Special Protection center endorsed by the Ministry of Family, Adolescents, and Children. She has also warned the Network that if it is determined that they were deliberately concealing the sexual abuse of “Rosita” that they will face criminal charges.
“Vizcaya thundered against the organizations that make up the Network of Women Against Violence and signaled that they had hidden the crime committed against the minor, but also indicated that the Network is taking an attitude that obstructs the work of protecting minors,” reported El Nuevo Diaro on August 13th. Vizcaya also “warned that legal actions might be taken against the organization if it was proven that they had hidden the crime committed against the minor” and “assured that if it was proven that the mother hid the violation of the minor, she would be ‘removed from the care of her mother’.”
The strategy employed by the Network was a standard method of the abortion lobby group in Latin America, a region where abortion is deeply offensive to the moral sensibilities of the culture, which is predominantly Catholic. While it is difficult to convince the population to accept “abortion on demand” as it is practiced in North America and Europe, pro-abortion activists have been occasionally successful in winning popular support by finding “hard cases”, in which a difficult pregnancy is used as an example of the need for “therapeutic abortion”.
The society and government are led to believe that the existence of such cases proves the necessity of creating more and more exceptions to existing laws against abortion, which are then relaxed over time as the population becomes more desensitized to the practice.
Ironically, the pro-abortion “Rosita” campaign had the opposite effect its promoters intended for Nicaragua. Three years after the campaign and the abortion, which plunged the small South American country into an intense nationwide debate, the national legislature voted to remove the exception for “therapeutic abortion” in the nation’s anti-abortion laws, and the BBC admitted that the new law was generally supported by the population. Today, all abortions are illegal in Nicaragua.