SW News: A Catholic diocese in Vietnam celebrated a special requiem Mass and burial for 700 aborted fetuses last Sunday. Catholics in the Xuan Loc diocese in the southwest of Vietnam who participated in the ceremony dedicated themselves to raising awareness of human dignity in a country where students lead the pack in seeking abortions.
Hundreds of pro-life volunteers attended the program and buried the fetuses in the church cemetery which is home to over 62,000 unborn babies. Before the burial, the dead fetuses were cleaned with alcohol, wrapped in white cloth, given names, decorated with flowers, and placed in the church for people to pray for.
Catholic priests Joseph Nguyen Van Tich and Vincent Nguyen Minh Tien presided over the service on January 29 in the parish of Bac Hai in the city of Bien Hoa. "Burying dead fetuses is apologizing to unborn children for the pain and suffering we make them endure. And we pray that other babies will be safe," said Father Nguyen, head of the diocese's Committee for the Protection of Life.  Statistics show that most of abortions are performed on unmarried girls between the ages of 15 and 19.
In a speech made to the United Nations on 25 September 2020, Pope Francis said “It is troubling to see how simple and convenient it has become for some to deny the existence of human life as a solution to problems that can and must be solved for both the mother and her unborn child.
Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. A study conducted by the Hanoi Central Obstetrics Hospital found that 40% of all pregnancies in Vietnam are terminated each year.
In Vietnam, which has a population of 99.4 million people, 300,000 terminations occur annually with students accounting for over 70% of them. Each month, pro-life volunteers gather 700–1,500 dead fetuses, including stillbirths.