Lianna Rebolledo, founder of Loving Life, recently sat down with Live Action president and founder Lila Rose to discuss her experience of choosing life for her baby after she was raped.
At the age of 12, Rebolledo was at a small shopping center in Los Angeles when two men took her, raped her repeatedly, and left her for dead. When she came home from the hospital, she struggled with depression and attempted suicide by taking all of her medication at once. She was taken to the hospital where she learned she was pregnant.
“The doctor told me not to worry,” Rebolledo told Rose, “because it was legal — abortion was legal. But in those moments you only want to hear kindness, you need sympathy, you need love, you need care. So I wondered, why he was telling me, ‘You can always get an abortion. You don’t even have to pay for it.'”
Rebolledo said she knew she had a baby inside of her and refused an abortion. She said that girls who are sexually assaulted and become pregnant do not need abortion, but that abortionists are looking to profit off of their trauma.
“Just knowing that I had my baby girl, it helped me. It helped me to heal and I just knew that my daughter had a purpose in life,” she explained. “And she gave me the strength to go on. She gave me hope. She showed me what real love was, and because of her, I am who I am right now.”
Without any support other than from her mother, and having recently come to the U.S. from Mexico City, Rebolledo went back to school and worked to provide a better life for her daughter. Having her daughter motivated her to help other people. Her organization, Loving Life, provides programs for the prevention of violence as well as support for survivors of violence. She is also a speaker, who shares her story around the world.
Though her assailants have never faced justice, she said, “I don’t forget, but I forgive.”
Rebolledo is now focused on teaching others that “abortion is not a solution when you’re raped.”
She continued, “[Abortion] doesn’t help you. It’s just a double rape. That’s the way I thought about it, that it was going to be a double rape. And if I did that, I don’t think I would be alive today.”
She explained that her daughter helped her to grow up and gave her purpose. “You know, they used to tell me, ‘If you don’t have the abortion, you’re daughter is going to remind you every day of your rapist.’ That’s not true,” she said. “She never reminded me of anybody else but herself.”
Rebolledo wants society to remember the value of these girls who become pregnant from rape and give them love and support rather than making them feel shameful. She also wants people to see the value of the children conceived in rape, and she travels to schools and even prisons to share her story and try to change the culture of death to one of life.
Rebolledo said all of her strength is from her daughter, who has sadly passed away.
“We need to change the narrative,” she told Rose. “They make us believe that your life is destroyed because you were raped and even worse because you’re pregnant. Like your life has ended because you’re having a baby. […] They make us feel like it’s our fault and nobody’s going to care for us like they’re feeling sorry for us. And they shouldn’t.”
She added, “If you asked me what was worse: the rape or losing her? Losing her.”
