During a recent concert in Haiti, Andrea Bocelli paused between songs to tell his audience a very personal story---a "piccola storia", as he called it---in which he encouraged struggling mothers to make the "right choice" and choose life for their children.  Greg Burke of Fox News reports:

Singer Andrea Bocelli, one of the best-known Italians in the world, has publicly thanked his mother for not aborting him.

In a YouTube video posted by an American pro-life group, Bocelli was playing the piano in a charity performance for Haiti. He told the story about how a young pregnant woman went into the hospital with appendicitis.

Bocelli said doctors put ice on her stomach, and later suggested she have an abortion, since they believed the baby would be born with some disability.

“But the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born,” the singer recounted, sitting at the piano. “That woman was my mother, and I was the child.”

Bocelli, who has sold more than 70 million records, was born partially blind, with congenital glaucoma. When he was still a boy he lost his sight completely.

“Maybe I’m partisan, but I can say that it was the right choice,” the singer said. “I hope this could encourage any mothers who sometimes find themselves in difficult situations, in those moments when life is complicated, but want to save the life of their baby.”

Click above to watch the YouTube video.

Stories like Bocelli's are simple but powerful.  As the first and second generations born under legalized abortion come of age, we are certain to hear more of them, like Tim Tebow's, and this one from Liverpool footballer Jamie Carraghan.  Individually and collectively, the personal stories told by these icons of popular culture cut immediately to the heart of the abortion debate and give the lie to the "choice" of death.