Brian Clowes, February 13-18, 2008.

Belize is in many ways a unique nation.  Its population of only 300,000 people is spread out over an area a little smaller than Massachusetts, making it the least densely populated nation in Latin America.  Belize is also the only English-speaking nation in Latin America, and boasts a very young and fast-growing population, with an average age of 20 and a population growth rate of nearly two percent. This was a situation that the population controllers found intolerable.

"King Condom" Tries to Conquer Belize

Shortly after Belize won its independence in 1981, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) established the Belize Family Life Association, comically misnamed, since it works hard to undermine the family and destroy human life.  BFLA quickly set up four contraceptive distribution centers in Belize and became involved in the National AIDS Task Force, boasting that it is "the only organization in Belize dedicated primarily to family planning." The results of IPPF's meddling were entirely predictable, as they are all over the world.

Belize soon became a model "Planned Parenthood" society, with three out of four children born out of wedlock.  Women still have an average of three or four children in Belize, but often they all have different fathers, and the women have to struggle constantly just to feed their children and themselves, as a succession of men move in and out of the home without a care in the world.  As far as the family is concerned, things won't get much worse in Belize because they can't get much worse.  As for reducing abortion, contraception failed to get the job done, as always.  The number of abortions more than tripled in a decade, from 760 in 1985 to 2,600 in 1996, more than twice the rate in the United States.

THE GROWING BELIZEAN AIDS PROBLEM

Belize also suffers from the highest rate of HIV infection in Central America, and it is accelerating fast (the 2006 UNAIDS estimate shows a 2.5% adult HIV infection rate).  Much of this increase is due to the continuous condom campaigns carried out by the BFLA and other population control groups.  I personally witnessed PAHO (Pan-American Health Organization) and UNAIDS representatives doing condom demonstrations on the crowded main street of Belize City, and UNICEF and the Red Cross have set up gigantic condom billboards in strategic locations.  Of course, neither the billboards nor the demonstrations mention the fact that condoms fail one time out of twelve uses.

Belize's uniqueness extends even to its abortion law.  Nobody in the country (except for the professional pro-abortionists) seems to know that abortion is entirely legal, and the power structures appear to want to keep it that way.  Pro-abortionists prefer to do their dirty and murderous work in peace and quiet, of course, with a minimum of fuss and opposition.  They managed to sneak abortion into the Belizean Constitution in 1981, when the nation became independent from Britain and changed its name from British Honduras.  This makes Belize the only Central American nation with legalized abortion.  Of course, the criminal code sports the usual "stringent" exceptions for the physical and mental health of the mother which, as we all know, means abortion-on-demand in practice.

THE CHURCH STANDS-UP FOR LIFE

Despite abortion being legal, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) alleges, as always, without evidence, that the number one cause of death among Belizean women is illegal abortion.  While the Catholic Church in Belize preaches abstinence, various United Nations agencies have blamed the Church for the high teen pregnancy rate!  In fact, a United Nations CEDAW committee member said that it was "alarming" that the Catholic Church runs schools in Belize, and that liberal sex education should be taught and condoms should be distributed in these schools, putting pressure on the Church through the "liberal Catholic groups present in other countries."  The former First Lady of Belize also complained that the Catholic Church was "complicating" the fight against AIDS by banning the use of condoms.  This is rather like saying that a fire department is "complicating" the business of stopping a fire by refusing to dump gas on it!

Population Controllers Hard at Work

In Belize, the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations offer the same old buzzwords and busily labor on the pseudo-issues of "sex role stereotyping," "gender awareness," "empowerment of women," and "lifting women's self-esteem."  Meanwhile, they studiously ignore the root causes that make many women's lives so miserable and difficult in Belize - pushing sex education from a very early age, dumping contraceptives on them, offering abortion when the contraceptives fail, promoting every kind of "family configuration" and telling women that all they need is "self-esteem" - and then everything will be just fine.

As usual, these "air-conditioned warriors" ensconce themselves in the very best of quarters.  In a country where one-third of the people live below the poverty line, UNFPA, UNICEF, and the other foreign population controllers work in a brand-new, stylish six-story building (the tallest in Belize) with a high fence all around it.  The building is unmarked by any identifying logos, so few people suspect the deadly work that goes on within the comfortable offices.

As they like to say in this small nation - UnBelizeable!

But the situation is not all gloomy.

BRINGING THE SANCTITY OF LIFE BACK TO BELIZE

When Father Tom and I traveled to Belize in February, we found a good-sized hard core of experienced pro-lifers ready to literally breathe life back into Belize.  At the top, Bishop Emeritus Osmond Peter Martin of the Belize City?Belmopan Diocese has expressed very strong support for HLI's mission.  He has fought the good pro?life fight for many years and is well aware of Planned Parenthood's influence.  Backing him up are our chaplain's, Father Papa's, confreres, the priests of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), including our host, Father Jim Blount, SOLT, Pastor of the Divine Mercy Parish, Father Leo Palma, SOLT, of La Inmaculada Parish in Orange Walk Town (the youngest priest in the diocese) and the SOLT priests in Benque Viejo del Carmen in the West of the country.

They are ably assisted in their efforts by veterans Margaret Robinson, founder of Helping Hands Pregnancy Counseling Center, which has sites in Belize City and in Benque Viejo, and Judy Vasquez, who runs the Helping Hands center in Belize City, as well as Lucy Jaramillo, Flavia Burgos, and Rachel de Ocampo, who are all NFP and crisis pregnancy counselors.  Maria Zabaneh runs the Voices for Life pro-life group.

Father Tom and I began our tour of Belize by meeting with the Vicar General of the Belize City-Belmopan Diocese, Father Noel Leslie, who expressed his support for our critically important pro-life missionary work.  We went on to meet with the main pro-life group in Belize, Voices for Life, then had Holy Mass at the Divine Mercy Parish.  Belizeans eat a late supper, so we traveled to the home of Mark and Leticia Lizarraga to share a meal, and Father Tom had the pleasure of meeting their German Shepherds, Shadow and Lady.

We really got to work the next day, speaking for six hours to about sixty religion and science teachers from Catholic high schools in Belize at the St. Vincent Pallotti School auditorium.  The teachers really needed to hear what we had to say about effectively tackling the AIDS and teen pregnancy problems in the country.  Many of the teachers believed that condoms are the answer to the problem - until Father Tom and I finished showing them how the failure-prone devices actually lead to the spread of AIDS and, more importantly, more and more illicit sexual activity that endangers the soul.  We covered a lot of ground, speaking on the various population control groups and their agenda, the beauty and effectiveness of natural family planning, and other topics such as how to overcome Belize's many societal problems by strengthening the family.

We spoke on the same issues later that day after driving to Orange Walk Town and addressing a larger audience of Catholic primary school teachers and lay leaders from the towns of Orange Walk and Corozal.  We ate another late supper and arrived back at the Divine Mercy Parish at about eleven in the evening.

A BEACON OF HOPE

Over the next three days, we repeated the same themes in depth and distributed materials to diocesan and SOLT priests at the Santa Familia Monastery in Cayo District and to some 200 members of Catholic groups at the Holy Redeemer Parish Hall in Belize City.  We also held an all-day training course for 50 pro-life leaders at Divine Mercy Parish, and Father Tom preached a pro-life homily at the Holy Redeemer Cathedral on Sunday.  We also spoke to a tough audience at a Belize Pharmacy Association meeting before catching a small plane to the tourist town of San Pedro on San Pedro Island.

This proved to be the most interesting part of our trip.  We walked through the garish tourist town, noticing that, like most such places, the entire economy is geared to helping people enjoy themselves in whatever way they choose.  There were plenty of Red Cross condom posters plastered on doors, but we experienced hope when we saw a United Democratic Party (UDP) banner over the main street that proclaimed "VOTE UDP for the Future of Our Children."  Father Tom and I hoped that the UDP would begin to turn things around and work for the protection of Belize's most helpless citizens, the unborn.

Father Tom preached a pro-life Mass in Spanish at the local Parish of St. Peter, and we spent a little time working and relaxing before heading back to Belize City and a sendoff by the Voices for Life group at the Global Spice Restaurant at Philip Goldson International Airport.

Some people may wonder why HLI is spending so much time and effort on a tiny country like Belize, which has a population less than one-third the size of Rhode Island. Belize is a strategic beachhead from which the pro-abortionists will attempt to spread their soul- and body-destroying philosophy, pills, and devices all over Central America.  Human Life International intends to push the anti-lifers out of this country and deny them the foothold they have worked so hard to establish.  Since Belize has a well-established pro-life structure and a supportive hierarchy, HLI has a much better chance of making it a shining beacon of hope to pro-lifers all over Central and Latin America.

You better Belize it!