How LifeSiteNews Changed My Life

One fine day at the beginning of 2014 two new friends I had met on Facebook asked me to help them translate some articles on a daily basis. They were making a Romanian website inspired by the Canadian pro-life website LifeSiteNews.com. It featured articles approaching a wide range of subjects related to natural family and culture shifts directly affecting it.

I had just got out of a 12-year “marriage” with my career as a magazine editor, mostly spent with Reader’s Digest Romania and, in my suddenly-generous spare time, I had become actively involved in civic actions such as opposing cyanide mining and fracking.

My only concern was that there were more and more causes in need of civic support and awareness-raising. After all, for some of us it did look like the end of the world as we knew it. Yet, many seemed not to care about it.

So I started translating for my friends’ website Stiripentruviata.ro (the name means “newsforlife [dot] ro”) some articles to be republished with permission from LifeSiteNews.com. My God, they were informative! The kind of things you don’t find in the mainstream media. And they came copyright-free, despite the fact that their publisher financed itself from donations. So I found out more about what was wrong with the world. And got myself a true cause to fight for. After all, we are all fighting for… life, aren’t we?

This is how LifeSiteNews.com came into my life. And my life would never be the same. Of course, LifeSiteNews.com did not know it. I did not know it yet. But the change was happening.

So I started working full-time in the Romanian pro-life movement, mostly for Stiripentruviata.ro and FamilyNews.ro, its sister English-language website with pro-family news from Romania. When I later met LifeSiteNews.com co-founder John Westen, I realized why I loved this work and why I felt my life was settling in the right place.

Only a “crazy” bunch of obstinate people with strong beliefs could accomplish a website like LifeSiteNews.com. I know what I am saying. Between November 26th and December 6th, our winter fundraising campaign on Stiripentruviata.ro got us 239 dollars and some insults from outraged readers – one of them was very upset by our article about a study that showed abortive parents are more inclined to abuse their subsequently born children. But this campaign also got us many visitors brought on the site by the excellent 46 articles published in that period and posted through all our online channels.

Being in the Romanian pro-life movement falls somewhere between difficult and impossible. Most of the time there is no funding. To give you an idea, the medium monthly net wage in Romania is the equivalent of 325 dollars. Some projects are postponed indefinitely. Many projects, among them our website, would not exist without the “crazy” obstinate pro-bono or underpaid work of a few people.

But the thing is we cannot quit. Personally, I don’t think I’m doing it to save the babies. I don’t think I’m doing it to raise awareness. I think I’m doing it because there’s nothing else I’d rather do. That is why I understand obstinate “crazy” people. And now and then I donate for my overseas compassionate and insightful friend John Westen’s website a small amount of money: 5 dollars now, 5 dollars then… Whenever there is something in my bank account, of course.

And of course, it’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of showing support. Life is never about the money.

Life always follows its course. It’s larger than us and we want to go with it. But, since it’s Christmas time, let’s not forget we are not celebrating an abstract idea of life, but true, blood-and-flesh Life embodied into a real Human Person.

That’s the miracle that we need today just as we needed it 2014 years ago.

I wish you all a peaceful Christmas celebrating the miracle of Life!

Ştefana Totorcea
Freelance Journalist