Voices for Life / “For Life” magazine – Spring 2016

CRISTIANO RONALDO was the most expensive football player in the world in 2009, when he transferred from the Manchester United team to Real Madrid.

Dolores Aveiro (photo above, next to her son), the Portuguese football player’s mother, has admitted she considered having an abortion when she was pregnant with him. By that time, she had had three children with her alcoholic husband.

But abortion was forbidden in Portugal in 1984 and the doctors wouldn’t help her. Then she tried to induce herself an abortion by consuming alcohol and making physical effort. But on February 5th, 1985, her child was born and she named him Ronaldo, inspired by Ronald Reagan, her husband’s favourite actor.

When she launched her autobiography, Ronaldo’s mother said he knew what happened while she was pregnant with him and that he was treating the situation humorously, saying:

You didn’t want me to be born. But now you see that I’m here helping all of you.

ADELE Laurie Blue Adkins was born in Tottenham, UK, on May 5th, 1988, as the only child of massager Penny Adkins and plumber Mark Evans.

Her father left them when Adele was only two and she was raised only by her mother. On November 19th, she gave birth to Angelo, her first-born. She said in an interview:

[Angelo] makes me very proud of myself. When I became a parent, I felt like I was truly living. I had a purpose, where before I didn’t …My main thing is Mum, then it’s me, then it’s work. I think I had to take the right amount of time off to let people miss me.

CÉLINE Dion would not be with us if a priest had not convinced her mother back in 1967 to keep her baby.

The singer’s parents, Adhémar-Charles and Thérèse Tanguay Dion, already had 13 children. Céline, the fourteenth, was born on March 30th, 1968. Céline has said afterwards her mother was besides her 100%. Actually, it was her mother who found Céline a good manager, who later even became her husband. Now Céline says family is everything to her, just as it was for her mother:

Once she got over her disappointment that an abortion was out of the question, she loved me as passionately as she’d loved the last little ones. My success is my family. My life is to be a mom. It is what I enjoy the most. It is my most amazing reward. I will take a chance with my music. I don’t take risks with my family.