WASHINGTON, D.C., January 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The Rev. Stephen Imbarrato is a father who regrets lost fatherhood.

Fr. Imbarrato has served as a priest for 10 years and founded two pro-life organizations in the Archdiocese of Albuquerque: Project Defending Life and Protest ABQ.

He's also a father who lost children to abortion.

Long before he was ordained or became a seminarian, Stephen Imbarrato got his girlfriend pregnant and told her “it would be best if you had the abortion,” Fr. Imbarrato told hundreds of young people at the annual March for Life Youth Rally in Washington, D.C., this afternoon.

He said “what many men do...I'll support you, whatever you decide.” After she decided to have an abortion, “we both got very guilty quickly,” he said. “We parted ways.”

He would find his calling as a parish priest and pro-life advocate.

One day, counseling young women on the sidewalk outside the abortion facility where his girlfriend had aborted years earlier, he became convicted by God over his role in the long-ago abortion.

With his bishop's permission, he contacted his old flame through mutual friends. “I apologized to her and took full responsibility for talking her into having the abortion,” he told the young people. “Tears came to her eyes, and I knew this was what she needed to hear.”

Then she told him something he needed to hear. “I said, 'I feel blessed that at least we have a baby in Heaven,'” Fr. Imbarrato said.

“She said, 'We have two babies in Heaven.'”

“I asked, 'There were two abortions?'”

“She said, 'No, I never told you. It was twins.'”

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