![]() ![]() Yet I have never heard the topic mentioned from any pulpit, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not even have an entry for “miscarriage.” The closest it comes to addressing the issue is in these hesitant words:Īs regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. With our comprehension of the redemptive power of suffering, Christians are in a unique position to speak about this crushing loss that touches so many in the human family. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning. In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few. As Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, points out in a moving New York Times editorial (25 November 2020): Moreover, while zygotes or embryos may feel no physical pain, miscarriage can be a source of acute and prolonged suffering for their parents. ![]() I saw the callousness with which nature and my body expelled beating hearts over and over.” ’ Six miscarriages later I was less sentimental. This will strike many as an unacceptable implication, and it is certainly not one that opponents of abortion rights advocate.Ī pro-choice friend of mine expressed a similar idea in more personal terms: “When I first saw my baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound, I thought ‘I could never. If zygotes and embryos are persons, therefore, surely more resources should be devoted to preventing natural miscarriage than to anything else. If a human organism is a person in the philosophical sense from the moment of conception, then it would seem to follow that spontaneous miscarriage is the greatest natural threat to the human race - the single biggest killer, outrunning cancer, malnutrition and natural disasters by a huge margin. Though no one likes to think or talk about this heartbreaking phenomenon, it poses a serious challenge to God’s perfect goodness and to the “sanctity of human life from conception.” If every human being is a beloved child of God, why do so many of them - perhaps the majority of them - fail even to survive the trip from the fallopian tube to the uterus? In her dialogue with pro-life philosopher Christopher Kaczor, pro-choice philosopher Kate Greasley implies that miscarriage leads to a reductio ad absurdum of the pro-life position: 1 Miscarriage would appear to be the great counterexample. From the first moment of our lives, he cares about every detail. The purpose of the world, which he created out of pure love, is to teach us about him and draw us back to his loving embrace. The deepest truth about the human person is contained in the words “Our Father.” Enfolded in this sublime opening to the Lord’s Prayer is God’s loving provision for and delight in each one of us our connection to Jesus and to one another as siblings and the idea that we are in God’s “image” not as a picture resembles an object, but as a child resembles a parent. ![]()
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