Dr. Jesús Poveda helps women at risk of abortion every day of the year except one: December 28, the feast of the Holy Innocents, in which each year he carries out an act of peaceful resistance that ends with his arrest.
This is what happened last Saturday at the doors of the Dator abortion center in Madrid, where Poveda sat on the floor, refusing through peaceful resistance to get up from the place in the face of repeated instructions from the National Police.
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Finally, several agents from the riot units carried the doctor out of the place, who was handcuffed and taken to the police station, where he remained for 12 hours.
in the program Sixth Continent of Radio María Spaindirected by the Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, Bishop José Ignacio Munilla, Poveda has shared some lessons he has learned through his annual stays in the dungeons.
The veteran pro-life volunteer explained the importance of living detachment inside the cell. “They search you and take everything from you. They even took off my scapular so that he wouldn’t hang me, which would be the last straw for a pro-life person,” he explained ironically.
More seriously, he explained that in this circumstance the expression of Pope Francis comes to mind that emphasizes that at funerals no one takes the moving truck after the hearse.
On the other hand, it highlights the benefit of “sharing situations with cell ‘mates’”, knowing their situations and confirming the need to have good legal assistance.
“They were interested in me spending the night. I have been deprived of liberty for 12 hours and they intended for me to spend the night there, but thanks to the fact that I do not spend money on lawyers but rather invest in lawyers, the lawyer arrived and justified that he did not have any type of criminal record, that I was the only one “What I did was disobey, there was some resistance, but at no time was there violence,” he explained.
“Then he made the police officer who was acting as judicial secretary at that time see that it made no sense for him to spend the night there. But the intention was: This man has disobeyed us once again, this man is going to be here for a long time as possible. I spent twelve hours, which is not bad,” he explained, before sharing that “in twelve hours you pray very well.”
Thirdly, Poveda considered that, in prison, “you learn to be alone”, a circumstance that “in a society like the current one is very important” in his opinion.
“Being without your cell phone, being undisturbed for 12 hours, for me was a very gratifying moment. I only asked about the time to pray the Angelus and to pray it around 12, which seemed very important to me on a Saturday”, a day that the Church usually dedicates to the Virgin Mary.
On the other hand, Dr. Poveda shared some of the characteristics of freedom that he has had the opportunity to reflect on during his short stays in the dungeons since the 80s of the last century.
“Freedom has to be free and is based on the Truth. The truth makes you free, if not you cannot be free,” he stated, before pointing out that “the lie is abortion, the lie is euthanasia… The lie does not allow you to be free.”
To exercise freedom, he also valued independence: “You have to be independent. If you depend on an unjust state, you are going to end up doing unjust things, because if not they will end up withdrawing your subsidy.”
“So many NGOs that started with a certain freshness to help end up being the opposite of what they started because they are not truly independent,” he lamented.
In this sense, he argued about the importance of the economy: “It is better for 100 people to give you one euro than for the State to give you 100 euros, because when the accounts don’t work out, the State will stop giving it to you.”
For Dr. Poveda, freedom is also closely related to beauty that, as the classics of Russian literature have prominently expressed, “will save the world.”
Thus, he highlighted the beauty of respect for life, for a pregnancy, for a family, “in the face of vileness or horror.”
Finally, he considered that “Freedom entails responsibility. People who are and know that we are free have to be responsible for knowing that we are free and we cannot go where everyone goes, or what everyone does.”
“You have to be responsible, which as its name indicates is responding to what is happening,” he insisted.
Nicholas de Cardenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish husband and father and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specializing in sociopolitical and religious information. I have worked for more than 10 years in defense of human rights and have accreditations in Journalism and Comprehensive Communication. Since July 2022, I have been a correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.