How Actress Alexa PenaVega Helped a Pregnant Teen, Saved Unborn Baby
By Movieguide® Contributor
While on the “Speak Out” podcast, actress Alexa PenaVega shared why she is strongly pro-life and told the story of when she helped a pregnant teen, saving an unborn baby’s life.
“I honestly believe that you either believe in life as life as a whole, and you see babies, whether babies are in in the womb or outside of the womb, as life or you don’t,” PenaVega said. “Once life begins—that is a whole baby. That is a beautiful life, and for me, I will do whatever it takes to protect that.”
“I think a lot of people feel like in today’s day and age if you’re pro-life that means you’re just pro birth,” she continued. “I think that’s a huge misconception on what being pro-life means. Pro-life means all of life, like looking at the aspect of the child but also the mom. The mom needs resources. The mom needs help. She needs love and guidance and sometimes finances.”
The mother of three has long fought for the sanctity of life and other Christian values alongside her husband Carlos PenaVega.
Alexa and Carlos both found fame as children starring in SPY KIDS and Nickelodeon’s BIG TIME RUSH respectively. While PenaVega has mostly given up acting to raise their kids, she has returned to the silver screen a few times to star alongside her husband.
PenaVega uses her platform to encourage other couples, and she often appears on Christian podcasts to talk about faith.
After expressing the importance of pro-life values on the “Speak Out” podcast, PenaVega also shared the story of when she helped a pregnant teen, saving the life of an unborn child.
She explained that last year a “well-known” man reached out to her and said that a young woman had messaged him because her sister was going to have an abortion, and she was a fan of PenaVega. He asked her to join a call with the girl.
“I was so excited at this possibility,” she said. “But I’ve also never had this conversation before—what do you say to a young girl who’s in this position? I think she was 16 or 17 and she’s just in this position of ‘I don’t know what to do.’”
The two spent about an hour and a half talking.
“I just told her about that joy that I have with my kids and the greatest thing that I ever felt was like being able to tuck them in at night a like seeing their beautiful little sleeping faces… Those are moments that just are so life-giving. They’re so simple and yet they’re the most beautiful things you can experience as a mom.”
Despite not feeling like she had made much of an impact on the teen, the girl decided to keep the baby.
“I get to see this baby on social media… I see this beautiful little girl and I start bawling,” PenaVega added. “Even to play the tiniest role in that girl’s life, I will forever feel connected to her.”
Movieguide® previously reported on PenaVega and her faith:
Alexa PenaVega is revealing the reason why she decided to leave Hollywood behind and move her family with husband Carlos PenaVega to Hawaii in the couple’s joint memoir “What if Love is the Point? Living for Jesus in a Self-Consumed World.”
In an interview with Fox News, Alexa shared how the couple fell in love.
“I had come right out of divorce and felt that I needed to realign my life,” she explained. “I wanted a deeper relationship with my faith. I wanted a relationship with God. I wanted to attend bible study and just dive into my faith. I wasn’t looking for any kind of relationship other than the relationship I had with my faith.
“I showed up to bible study and I met Carlos,” Alexa continued. “I just wanted to be friends… I didn’t want anybody in the entertainment industry. No actors, no singers… He was everything on my no list. And everything on my no list was everything I never knew I needed. It was the person who could help fill in all the gaps that I was missing in my life. That was Carlos.”
The couple got married in 2014 and share three children — Ocean, 5, Kingston, 3, and Rio, 1.
The PenaVegas are both actors and couldn’t imagine leaving Hollywood. However, they soon realized they needed a change.
“Carlos was really struggling with the industry,” Alexa explained. “Every audition he went on, it would get down between him and one other guy and the other guy would always get it. The rejection was just becoming too much for him. This went on for a full year. At the time, I was pregnant. We’d always talked about moving to Hawaii, but later on in life, like a retirement plan. But we also knew that we didn’t want to raise our kids in Los Angeles.
“I felt this tug in my heart. I felt it was God going, ‘You guys need to get out of here. It’s time.’ I didn’t want to move. I knew it was the right decision, but it wasn’t something that I was so excited about.”
She continued, “You would think Hawaii is so exciting. But I loved LA. I loved my career and I didn’t want to go. At the time, I felt like we were moving for Carlos. But one day I was praying in my car and I suddenly had this revelation. I felt like God was preparing us for this move. And we weren’t moving for Carlos. We were moving for my heart. It stopped me in my tracks because all that time, I thought we were just moving for Carlos. But I needed a heart reset. I was the one trapped in the entertainment world and needed to take a step back. My job became my identity. God pulled me out of that so I could learn how to be an awesome mom and an awesome wife. God helped us build that foundation in our family. And once I had that revelation, I felt at peace.”
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