Does a Hail Mary save an unborn baby?

[Pogue_Mahone]

I heard somewhere that each Hail Mary prayer prayed saves one baby from abortion. Is this true?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I believe it was St. Therese of Lisieux who observed that even the smallest of deeds done for the love of God has infinite value. She presumed of course that those deeds were done as acts of love and not in a superstitious fashion with the thought that the action would ensure a fruitful result.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines superstition as:

Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition (CCC 2111).

If someone were to pray a Hail Mary with great devotion and with the intention that, if it be God’s will, an unborn baby be saved from abortion, yes, God could choose to reward that prayer by giving a mother the grace to choose life for her child. But if the prayer was thought of in a piously superstitious fashion, the sentiment that a Hail Mary saves an unborn child could be reduced to the same level of “Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”