Name the Children: Your Opportunity to Bestow a Name on a Forgotten Unborn Child

Names Submitted: 1081

Part one: Please read this full explanation first:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have become dehumanized by a culture that permits abortion. When culture and law fail to consider the unborn as persons, not only are those children dehumanized, but so are those who kill them, and so are the rest of us.

We all need repentance and healing. We need to be re-humanized. (If you have had an abortion or lost a family member to abortion, you can find healing ministries at our special website www.AbortionForgiveness.com.)

Building a culture of life includes changing the way we all think, speak and act toward the children who are living in the womb, and those who died before birth. Together, we must learn to treat them as persons.

And something we all know is that every person has a name.

One of the very first things people do when meeting one another for the first time is that they let each other know their names. It would be strange indeed for someone to say, when we ask their name, “I don’t have one.”

Mourning the children who have been killed by abortion, remembering them, burying them (when we have their remains), and giving them a name, is part of the process of re-humanizing them, our society, and ourselves.

The first people, of course, who are entrusted with naming their children are the parents. In my role as Pastoral Director of both Rachel’s Vineyard and of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, my team and I assist such parents who mourn the children they lost through abortion. Part of that grieving process is to name the children.

It is at that part of the healing process that, after they have thought about the death of their child, they begin to focus on the child’s life, and reclaim a spiritual relationship with that child, whom they have entrusted to the Lord.

Rachel’s Vineyard and many other ministries for healing after abortion carry out this important work each day. And when the parents are not interested in such a process, sometimes other family members step forward to grieve and name the children: grandparents, siblings, and other relatives of these babies.

Some 65 million children in the United States alone have been killed by abortion since 1973, and that number does not by any means count them all. Countless hundreds of millions of others have been killed by abortion throughout the world.

And most of these children will never be given names by their family members. They have been completely abandoned. And we have all been made less in the process.

That’s why we all can and should be part of the process of re-humanizing these children, and ourselves. And this project gives us a chance to do that by giving the children a name.

God has entrusted us all to the care of one another; we are one human family. In the sight of God, there is no such thing as a stranger – we are all brothers and sisters.

Psalm 27:10 says, “Though father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”

Many fathers and mothers have forsaken their aborted children. But the Lord receives them.

We also know Biblically, as Saint Paul tells us, that we are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it (see 1 Cor. 12:27). If, therefore, “the Lord” receives those children, our brothers and sisters, who have been aborted, then he receives them also through us, as His Body alive and active in the world, spreading his nurturing love, compassion, and kindness.

St. John Paul II pointed out in “The Gospel of Life,” “The God of the Covenant has entrusted the life of every individual to his or her fellow human beings, brothers and sisters” (The Gospel of Life, n. 76).

As parents who grieve and name their aborted children reclaim a sense of their own motherhood or fatherhood, so we who grieve and name the hundreds of millions of forgotten children reclaim a sense of our brotherhood and sisterhood with them.

And therefore, in the name of the Lord, we can care for our brothers and sisters who have been abandoned by abortion, just as we care for our brothers and sisters whose parents abandon them at other stages of life.

That care includes acknowledging their personhood by giving them the name their parents failed to give them.

This project gives you a chance, therefore, to name an aborted child, among the countless children who will otherwise never be given a name.

You can name the child in any way you wish. The name might be a boy’s name, a girl’s name, or a name that can apply either way. You may want to give just a first name, or a first, middle, or last name. You may even want to give the child your own last name, as a sign of “adopting” him or her spiritually. It is totally up to you.

Likewise, you may remain anonymous in this process, or may let us know who you are.

Also, you may request a certificate, on which we will place the name of the child. We will fill it out and send it to you. That can then serve as a reminder, to you and others in your home, of this special act of love and remembrance that you have carried out for a forgotten, abandoned child.

As this project gets underway, there will be special efforts that are geographically based; for instance, in various cities, there are gravesites where hundreds and in some cases thousands of aborted children are buried. It would seem appropriate for the people of that community to name the children buried there.

Along with bestowing a name, please also join me in a special prayer for all these aborted babies which you can find below or after you submit a name on the form.

God bless you!

Fr. Frank Pavone

Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Pastoral Director, Rachel’s Vineyard and Silent No More

A Prayer for Forgotten Aborted Babies

Father of Life,
God and Creator of all,
We praise you today,
For we are fearfully, wonderfully made.

You have created the human body and soul
To reflect your own image and likeness.

Lord, we see you in every human being,
We reverence you in each of our brothers and sisters.

And we grieve and mourn for each child
who has been destroyed
By the violence of abortion.

Lord, we pray for those parents and other family members
Who grieve the loss of children to abortion,
And who commend them to you
And lovingly bestow names upon them.

Bless these moms, dads, and families
with continued healing and peace.

We think also of all the aborted babies
Whose families have not sought repentance or healing,
and who continue to be ignored,
not even having a name.

We commend them to you,
And we recognize them as our brothers and sisters.

Lord, your Word says,
“Though father and mother forsake me,
The Lord will receive me” (Ps. 27:10).

As the Body of Christ in the world,
we know we are to bring
Your Heart, Your Hands, and Your Love
into the world by our words and actions,
Including in how we treat the unborn.

Lord, as we name those aborted children
who have not yet been named,
Enable us all to connect
With the humanity of our youngest brothers and sisters.

Heal us all
From the wounds abortion inflicts on every one of us.
Through our solidarity with the children lost to abortion
And with those still living in the womb,
May we be your vessels of grace and truth
To build a lasting culture of life, of healing, and of love.

We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

By Frank Pavone
www.ProLifePrayers.com

Part two: Enter Requested Information

Now that you have read the explanation to the left, please first let us know if you want to name the child anonymously or if you want to let us know who you are.

If you click the “Submit name(s) anonymously” box, the name and address fields will disappear.

But please also note that if you want to receive a certificate bearing the name that you give the child, you’ll need to let us know who you are.

Submit name(s) anonymously

Please send me a certificate with the baby's name.

Your Name:

Prefix

*First Name

M.I.

*Last Name

Suffix

*Email Address:

*Re-enter Email Address:

Phone Number: 123-456-7890 format

Street Address: include suite and apartment information

City

State

*Zip Code

Comments:

*Baby's Name:

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