Mother Teresa will be declared a Saint by Pope Francis in a special ceremony on Sunday at the Vatican. The pro-life heroine skillfully exploited her celebrity status to propel the pro-life cause internationally like no one else before her or since.
The four feet tall Albanian nun was never afraid to speak truth to power, even when it made the powerful of the world feel uncomfortable, and she never pandered to curry their favor. Draped in her iconic white sari, she traveled the globe condemning abortion even when doing so was inconvenient and unwelcome.
While lunching at the White House, First lady Hillary Clinton reportedly asked Mother Teresa why America had not yet elected a woman president. “She has probably been aborted,” Mother Teresa replied.
During her acceptance speech of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize Mother Teresa first popularized her signature condemnation of abortion.
“The greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child,” she told the crowd of nobles, politicians, and celebrities. After a moment of deathly silence Mother Teresa continued.
“For if a mother can murder her own child, in her own womb, what is left for you and for me? To kill each other.”
“Today millions of unborn children are being killed, but we say nothing.”
Then she raised her voice with alarm.
“To me the nations that have legalized abortion, they are the poorest nations. They are afraid of the little one! They are afraid of the unborn child! And the child must die. Because they don’t want to feed one more child! Because they don’t want to educate one more child! The child must die.”
She concluded her remarks about abortion with a plea.
“Let us make a strong resolution. We are going to save every little child. Every unborn child. Give them a chance to be born.”
Her plea was not heeded, and she continued to speak for the unborn unabashedly.
In 1985 she was a special invitee at the 40th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations during the height of the Cold War.
“We all want peace, and yet, and yet we are frightened of nuclears [weapons], we are frightened of this new disease [HIV/AIDS]. But we are not afraid to kill an innocent child, that little unborn child, who has been created for that same purpose: to love God and to love you and me.”
At the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, she surprised Bill and Hillary Clinton with scathing remarks against abortion as they sat close to her. She called abortion “a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”
“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion,” she said. President and First Lady remained quietly seated as the entire room erupted into a standing ovation after her speech
She also challenged those with a narrow view of feminism, such as when she said motherhood was “the gift of God to women” and that abortion destroyed it. “Those who want to make women and men the same are all in favor of abortion,” she stated in a message to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.