John Cardinal O’Connor founded the Sisters of Life in New York in 1991. The community of Catholic religious women profess four vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience, and “to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.”
They dedicate their lives to offering support and resources to pregnant women and mothers, hosting retreats, evangelizing, practicing outreach to college students, and helping women who suffer after abortion, among other things.
At St. Andrew’s, the sisters receive women who are “just really wondering what to do.”
“They’re in the throes of the decision about abortion or choosing life,” she urged. “And for us, it’s such a joy to just invite them to see everything a little different.”
She revealed one of the questions they ask pregnant women to help them discern.
“We’ll say, ‘If everything were different – if you had this dream and that dream and all the things that you hoped for – if it were different, if it were this, what would you do?”
According to Sr. Magdalene Teresa, these women give the same response: “Of course I would give life to my child, if I had all these resources.”
“That’s our biggest thing,” she said, “is to make their dreams come true because nothing should stand in the way of them achieving everything they want.”
“Pregnancy is not a disease,” she emphasized.
Sr. Magdalene Teresa agreed that material resources can be an obstacle to choosing life. But she said that the biggest challenge is “the spiritual and the lack of hope and the sense of basically not knowing” motherhood, including from their own mother.
“For me, that’s a big desire, is to provide that gift of maternity in our mission,” she responded.
The sisters do little things to lead to a “bigger place” – a place where women know, “I can rest in my maternity” and “rest in joy of being with my children.” One of those little things is offering women a cooking class to make dishes with chicken.
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At other locations, like their Sacred Heart convent in midtown Manhattan, they house and live side-by-side with pregnant women in need.
“The beauty of our charism,” she said, “it does speak to the heart.”
The sisters’ “basic message,” she said, is, “You are made in the image and likeness of God. You are unrepeatable and irreplaceable. And because you’re unrepeatable and irreplaceable, the child in the womb is.”
“You’re so loved by God,” she added. “You’re loved into being. If you were somehow not loved, you would cease to exist.”
The sisters dedicate their lives to both speaking and acting on that message. They’re not alone either, with over 20,000 volunteers to help them.
Among the problems that concern Sr. Magdalene Teresa is the pressures that push women toward abortion, including diagnosis via prenatal testing.
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