Border shelter for pregnant migrants is an ongoing pro-life effort, says co-founder

A shelter for pregnant migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border, run by a pro-life leader, is preparing to welcome the first child born while the mother is staying at the shelter, its co-founder told OSV News.

Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, founder and president of New Wave Feminists and co-founder of the Stellar Shelter, also known as the New Wave Feminists Consistent Life Ethic Center in Juárez, Mexico, called the process an opening of this “nice” refuge. of a wild journey.

“We opened on February 6 and have already seen over 100 women and children come to our shelter and then seek asylum,” she told OSV News on September 7. “We currently have two pregnant mothers; we’re going to give birth next week, which is amazing. This will be our first baby to be born while the mother stays at the shelter. So we’re all very, very excited for that.

Immigration and U.S.-Mexico border policy have become increasingly partisan and controversial topics in American politics. Juárez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Herndon-De La Rosa said the U.S. immigration system is a “man-made crisis,” alleging that both sides of the political aisle have no incentive to promote an immigration policy that is both humane and orderly.

“We also see this a lot with abortion,” she said. “The right tends to make a big deal out of it because that’s where their voter base is. And the left tends to make migration a very important problem. But no one is actually doing anything to solve the problem. In the end, truly vulnerable people fall through the cracks.

Herndon-De La Rosa said in the work of New Wave feminists at the shelter and in the pro-life movement, “what we’re trying to do is humanize human beings.”

“You hear these women’s stories about the most horrible things they’ve ever experienced in their home country and how they’re literally going through a jungle – where people are losing their lives and their children are losing their lives and everything all the time – which is a better option than staying where they are now,” she said, noting that women and children who undertake such a journey are vulnerable to sex trafficking and violence.

After such a journey, Herndon-De La Rosa said, migrants are sometimes greeted by an American culture that views them as criminals or workers who have come looking for work, and integrates them into a “nameless, faceless monolith that allows us to dehumanize easily.” people.”

“A lot of our work is giving them faces and names and showing what they’ve been through; tell their stories and present their experiences, so that people realize that it’s not just about nameless, faceless masses,” she said. “They are human beings. For believers, these are your brothers and sisters in Christ. And we need to have empathy for that.

As pro-life feminists, Herndon-De La Rosa said, her group felt called to help women at the border.

“You know, just like our humanity doesn’t begin at the birth canal, it doesn’t end at a border,” Herndon-De La Rosa said. “We are all still human beings and the unborn child in the womb of a migrant mother is just as human as an unborn child in the womb of an American mother.”

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