A reader asks:

Well, I would like to tell you what happened to me. My name is Daniela, I am 23 years old, I am expecting my first child, I am 22 weeks pregnant, and they have found that my baby has multiple malformations. Nothing can be done, and his chances of survival are zero; I may lose him before nine months, or reach the end but with the same fatal outcome. I have no choice but to wait for whatever God wills, but what can I do? I feel a very great pain and bitterness. What can I do to ease, at least in part, this great pain I am carrying? Please, help me.

Answer:

Dear Daniela:

I understand your pain. That is why I can think of nothing better than to send you the testimony of another young woman who was in the same situation as you. She wrote it in connection with the iniquitous law passed in Argentina permitting the abortion of anencephalic babies; but what she says about her relationship with her child has a broader significance.

A Mother’s Love
Dear Editor:

“My first little girl did not live long, only seven months in my womb; but she taught me so much that it is for her that I am writing this letter.
“My little girl had anencephaly. We knew it from the very first ultrasound and, of course, we wept. We wept to learn that she would not be able to live outside of me, perhaps a few hours, at most a day. Then we sat down to reflect, and we realized that my little girl would have life as long as I protected her, that within me she could make it, and that those nine months would be everything for her. And so, with my head held high, I felt myself the proud mother of my first daughter.
“Time passed, and I delighted in feeling her grow and move within me, and I was happy in her company for a few months. I became a mother for the first time, and I did so in a very special way, as the mother of someone who needed everything from me in order to live happily. In the seventh month, one day I stopped feeling her. The strain of turning over had been too much for her, and her heart stopped beating. And again I wept. We wept over her early death as any parent would weep over the ever-untimely death of a child.
“In the face of the ignorance shown by the legislators of the City of Buenos Aires, I ask myself: is it by letting one’s own child die that they mean to spare a mother from suffering? Would it not be better for her to be able to give her child all the love of a lifetime, even if only for a few months?”

María Mihura de Kenny

(the letter by Mrs. María Mihura de Kenny was published as a Letter to the Reader in the newspaper La Nación).

Author: Fr. Miguel Ángel Fuentes

Source: The Theologian Responds