‘I Saved My Daughter’s Life’: Teenage Mom Rejected Abortion Option After Being Raped at Age 12

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Lianna Rebolledo lived surrounded by violence for her whole childhood and adolescence. Her mother had left her native country of Mexico to go to California, also fleeing domestic violence, where she would eventually bring her four kids to a better life.

Yet at the age of just 12, Lianna, then living in Mexico City, became a victim of sexual assault. She was kidnapped by two men who took her away to be brutally raped and beat her badly. “It was very violent,” she told Life News. “I honestly thought they were going to kill me.”

Tragically, Lianna would become pregnant as a result.

“I was 12 and even though I didn’t see the ultrasound, I heard the heartbeat.” After having earlier tried to commit suicide because of the trauma, Lianna was now “aware that what [she] had inside [her] was a little person.”

When young Lianna went to the doctors, she was offered the option of terminating the pregnancy, but she realized that this wouldn’t take the pain of the rape away. “If abortion wasn’t going to heal anything, I didn’t see the point,” she told Life News. What galvanized Lianna’s decision was hearing the heartbeat of her daughter.

“She was my kid. She was inside of me,” Lianna said. “[S]he needed me, and I needed her.” Lianna would later need all the help she could get to heal from the horrendous trauma she had suffered and the anxiety and panic attacks that would follow.

“There was a fight between my post-traumatic stress disorder and the part of me that wanted to recover and provide for my daughter,” Lianna told Angelus News. Thankfully, she had the example of her resilient mother to follow. She was able to attend special middle and high schools to complete her education but had to work as a cashier and later as a waitress at age 13 to take care of her daughter on top of school homework.

Whenever things seemed impossible, though, Lianna had her daughter to keep her inspired. “In my situation, two lives were saved,” she told Life News. “I saved my daughter’s life, but she saved my life.”

But though Lianna managed to persist through her trauma and pregnancy, she had yet to find her calling in life. “I wanted to do something for others, but I knew I had to heal myself first,” she told Angelus. After completing her Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism at UCLA, she went through a counseling certification course.

Lianna also found another calling: faith, which gave her a new lease on life. “I now recognize that God was always with me, even when I was kidnapped,” she said. “[B]ecause if it were not that way I would not have survived. Many don’t return to their houses, but I did.”

This realization led her to create an organization called “Loving Life” for other women who had suffered from domestic violence. Its mission is “to unite forces of millions of people to prevent physical, psychological and sexual abuse,” according to its website.

Lianna hopes that the organization will also save babies like her daughter, who might otherwise not be born. “[T]he value of human life doesn’t come from the way in which it was conceived,” she told Angelus.

“An abortion is a graver violence against the woman and the unborn. An abortion in my case would not have remedied anything,” she stated.

Now, Lianna’s daughter has graduated from university and gone on to pursue her own career. “She’s always been there for me,” Lianna told Life News. “She’s the only person who has shown me a real love. And I always will be grateful.”