It it murder?

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verawang

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I lost 3 children before I found out I have a hereditary genetic disease called Chromosome Translocation. I found this out about a month ago and basically there is a one in eight chance (that is a general number – I haven’t heard back yet about exactly what our odds are in this case) that I would have a completely genetically healthy child. More than likely I would keep miscarrying or having stillbirths like I have had so far over and over and over. It’s a situation where I’d be more likely to be stuck by lightening than to ever birth to a living, healthy child.

I’ve spoken with different people in the church. I signed up for NFP classes and am doing the Creighton Model right now. My husband and I have had discussions about how we want children. We are in a low income family so adoption fees aren’t feasible and I know there is help for parents looking to adopt especially in November. We are looking into that.

I know I can’t use Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis because it’s a form of IVF and isn’t natural even though the eggs destroyed would be children that would die probably with-in weeks or months anyway. I realize I have no right to decide when someone dies and that is why I’ve carried all my children as long as I could even though I knew there were problems.

As a Catholic being sterilized is also out of the question. This one I sometimes have a more difficult time with because the reason I was given on why NOT to be sterilized is because as a married Catholic I’m supposed to be open to procreation. In my situation that doesn’t apply because we fall under one of the few reasons given to use NFP to not achieve a pregnancy. When I asked about that I was told that sterilization is also not natural so it should not be used which was the same reason given for the PGD IVF. I know all this and am willing to deal with it and accept it even if I don’t like it. Now saying I don’t like it doesn’t mean I don’t disagree.

My question is this. Since we know that any pregnancy we achieve is astronomically prone to end in child loss again is it wrong to want to try for that chance? I can’t get a straight answer. I keep hearing to use NFP but no one will flat out say the one of two answers I want to know. From a Catholic standpoint would a person like me getting pregnant be murder because we know the child would die probably before we could ever even have them baptized? Or because it’s a natural pregnancy achieved between husband and wife is it sanctioned by the church maybe as God’s will? I just want to know if it’s murder or not?
 
verawang said:
I lost 3 children before I found out I have a hereditary genetic disease called Chromosome Translocation. I found this out about a month ago and basically there is a one in eight chance (that is a general number – I haven’t heard back yet about exactly what our odds are in this case) that I would have a completely genetically healthy child. More than likely I would keep miscarrying or having stillbirths like I have had so far over and over and over. It’s a situation where I’d be more likely to be stuck by lightening than to ever birth to a living, healthy child.

I’ve spoken with different people in the church. I signed up for NFP classes and am doing the Creighton Model right now. My husband and I have had discussions about how we want children. We are in a low income family so adoption fees aren’t feasible and I know there is help for parents looking to adopt especially in November. We are looking into that.

I know I can’t use Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis because it’s a form of IVF and isn’t natural even though the eggs destroyed would be children that would die probably with-in weeks or months anyway. I realize I have no right to decide when someone dies and that is why I’ve carried all my children as long as I could even though I knew there were problems.

As a Catholic being sterilized is also out of the question. This one I sometimes have a more difficult time with because the reason I was given on why NOT to be sterilized is because as a married Catholic I’m supposed to be open to procreation. In my situation that doesn’t apply because we fall under one of the few reasons given to use NFP to not achieve a pregnancy. When I asked about that I was told that sterilization is also not natural so it should not be used which was the same reason given for the PGD IVF. I know all this and am willing to deal with it and accept it even if I don’t like it. Now saying I don’t like it doesn’t mean I don’t disagree.

My question is this. Since we know that any pregnancy we achieve is astronomically prone to end in child loss again is it wrong to want to try for that chance? I can’t get a straight answer. I keep hearing to use NFP but no one will flat out say the one of two answers I want to know. From a Catholic standpoint would a person like me getting pregnant be murder because we know the child would die probably before we could ever even have them baptized? Or because it’s a natural pregnancy achieved between husband and wife is it sanctioned by the church maybe as God’s will? I just want to know if it’s murder or not?
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It is not wrong to want to try again. Natural Family Planning versus IVF is a debate I can’t answer. It is not murder if the unborn child ends in a stillbirth. The child who is not baptized will be in Purgatory I do believe…or possibly a place called Limbo until God calls that child home to Him again. I may be wrong, ask JReducation on this one. I have a hard time thinking or believing that God would create a soul only to refuse it later on…but then I’m hoping for the salvation of all mankind also, and the reclaiming of all souls as well. Do not take to heart everything doctors say…Doctors kept telling my Mom that I would die before my 1st birthday, and I’m 37. Have hope for the life that is created within you, I do.
God Bless
Mary1173
God’s peace be with you.
praying your next pregnancy is a successful one.
 
If the child dies naturally because of this genetic issue, it is not murder. If you want to keep trying, that is your right, miracles do occur. Pray to Elizabeth who was well past menopause when she conceived John the Baptist.

My concern is that loosing a child even through miscarriage or stillbirth is very hard on you. How many times can you bear that grief? Yes, in heaven you will be reunited with them, but in this world the loss is unimagineable to me.

My thought is that you should use the NFP and because it is natural, if it is God’s will that you conceive anyway and bear that miraculous healthy child He will intervene.

I have one other thought, if adoption isn’t possible, how about foster care? I knew a godly woman who raised foster children for decades. Many of them came and went out of her care but there were three who grew up entirely in her household.

Here is one thought that comes from the depths of my own ignorence, because of your unique situation, perhaps if you applied to your bishop he could give you a special dispensation for sterilization. The worst that could happen is he responds, “are you nuts? I can’t give you a special dispensation for that.” But if you don’t ask, you don’t know.

God bless you and comfort you in your sorrow.
 
About adoption…

If you go through your local county, adoption will not cost you a thing. My friend was a foster mom of infants, and most of them were adopted by families through social services – so the families adopted healthy infants (less than one year old) and didn’t have to pay any adoption fees. Just another avenue to consider.

Gertie
 
no it is not murder if you conceive a child who later dies because of this genetic defect or for any other reason. my advice would be to cultivate trust in divine Providence as the cornerstone of your marriage, in this and in all other areas of your life together.
 
verawang said:
My question is this. Since we know that any pregnancy we achieve is astronomically prone to end in child loss again is it wrong to want to try for that chance? I can’t get a straight answer. I keep hearing to use NFP but no one will flat out say the one of two answers I want to know. From a Catholic standpoint would a person like me getting pregnant be murder because we know the child would die probably before we could ever even have them baptized? Or because it’s a natural pregnancy achieved between husband and wife is it sanctioned by the church maybe as God’s will? I just want to know if it’s murder or not?
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First of all I would like to say that I am sympathetic to your situation and can’t imagine the pain you must be going through. To want a child so badly and be unable to carry that child to term, and to come so agonizingly close time and again, must thoroughly test your faith. The easy response is to encourage you to keep trying but I can’t easily say that I would if I were in your shoes.

But if do keep trying understand that pregnancy is always an iffy proposition and a successful delivery always beats the odds. For example, according to the best studies for humans some 30% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant on the uterine wall leading to spontaneous miscarriage. The actual numbers may be much higher, based on more complete studies using other primates. One study found that some 70% of chimpanzees in the study group spontaneously miscarried within six days of fertilization. Simply knowing that the odds are even greater in your case hardly constitutes murder.

Listen to these wonderful responses from the posters above, and pray with all your heart. May God bless you and yours.
 
You have been given a heavy cross to bear. I’m sorry for that, and I’ll pray for you.

What the Church says about unbaptized babies who die is that we trust them to our merciful God. That means we don’t know the answer, but God does, and He is merciful, so we can trust Him.

My personal belief is that they are in Heaven, praying for us. That’s based on my idea of what Heaven is like, which is a human idea based on human happiness. Whatever the real truth is, we will be satisfied with it - assuming we get there!

God bless you,

Ruthie
 
Your soul could be murdered each time you have to mourn a loss like this being forced upon you in this way.

I am very sorry this is your life now. You can change it.

I know your Jesus valued life, and your life is important to him if he existed.

He said many things about people who put heavy burdens on others using God’s name in doing so.

Listen to that Jesus.
 
Well, there was only one thing I had left that was really going for me (that I knew of) and it’s gone now too along with my motherhood. You are right, I can’t handle another death. I couldn’t handle the other three. I’m getting my tubes tied. I can’t handle NFP. It’s intigrating the fact that I can’t have kids into every moment of the day. I’ve just lost so much and I can’t stand to make a life change that reminds me so often that I’m trying NOT to be a Mom because I can’t murder any more children. It is murder if you know they are going to die and you get pregnant any way. I can make this decision and not have to spend so much of my day thinking about how NOT to have children. It will be done and over. I don’t have much left so if I want to find happiness it’s best not to dwell so much on what I’ve lost. It could always get worse. For the time being I still have a cozy place to live and many things to be thankful for and I don’t want to ruin that any more by not being able to distract myself from the things that make me a bad person. I know in the Catholic faith it’s all or nothing but I don’t feel I should take advice from celibate people who’ve never had to hold their own dead children in their hands and bury them. It’s to much to ask for. My situation isn’t going to change so I ought to spend more time on trying to cope with that and be happy than worrying about what is right in the eyes of the church. All that is making me want to do is NOT go to church any more.
 
This is a tough choice. About 25 years ago, my sister in law found herself in the same situation. She gave birth to my niece and then we lost count of all the miscarriages she had before my nephew came along eight years later. It was very hard, but my niece and nephew are twenty something today and are healthy young adults.
 
Oh, my poor sister. My heart aches for you. You want so much to be a mother. You have lost three children, and grieve for each one of them. You don’t want to go through that again, and have to grieve for yet another dead child.

You will not find happiness in sterilization, just a different kind of grief. You will ask yourself, for the rest of your life, if you might have given birth to a healthy baby if you hadn’t sterilized yourself. And think of your grief if an in-the-womb cure is found for Chromosome Translocation! We are making so much progress with genetics that it could happen tomorrow.

You don’t KNOW that every pregnancy will end with a dead baby. You are choosing to believe that.

You have not murdered any of your babies. To get pregnant is to give life. That the life you carry ends without your consent is not murder. Not, not, not. How can it be murder when you are trying to bring life into the world?

I have a small pasture that is so weedy I hardly ever see a blade of grass. I could kill those weeds if I plowed salt into my pasture and drenched it with vinegar. Nothing would grow there for years. (It’s even called “sterilization.”) The weeds would be gone. So would those rare blades of grass.

Your babies are not weeds.

Love,

Ruthie
 
Jesus knew, intimately, what He was giving up when He chose celibacy, because He created the very thing He denied Himself.

Priests are His selected stand-ins. They are celibate in imitation of Him. Their knowledge of what they are giving up is not as deeply intimate as His is, but they still know.

Celibacy is the lack of physical experience, that’s all. I have never had a child, yet I can try to imagine your pain. So can a priest.

To believe that a celibate can’t advise you because they haven’t had your experience is to believe a lie. Satan loves that particular lie, because it pushes people out of the Church.

There’s another old lie that Satan loves. He wants you to believe that God chose to inflict this sorrow on you. Do you really think He was sitting around, thinking, “What shall I do to verawang? She needs a cross to carry. I know! I’ll kill her babies!”

God is the Creator - not the destroyer. Genetic mutations exist because Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lies and empty promises. They had identical, perfect DNA, and it would have remained perfect if they had stayed in the garden. Once death entered the world, genetic mutations began.

It wasn’t God’s will. It wasn’t Adam’s and Eve’s, either. Whose will do you suppose it was? Whose lies fooled Adam and Eve into getting thrown out? Whose lie has gotten you to believe that trying to bring life into this world is murder?

Now Satan is promising you that getting sterilized will “make it all better.” All he really wants is your soul in hell, and he doesn’t care how he gets it. God wants your soul, too, but He “plays fair” by letting you make the choice.

The choice would be clear without Satan’s muddying things up. And why is Satan allowed to do this? Because God let him make his own choice.

Praying for you,

Ruthie
“…he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more…”
Rev 21:4 (RSV)
 
The grief of losing that part of me seems like an acceptable trade for the grief of losing a child. BUT I’m doing what I don’t really agree with for at least a few months. My husband is now dissapointed and angry with me because he does not want to spend any more time out of his day talking about NFP. We read the book together and he gets angry or upset. He asks me if I’d like him to make the appointment for me to get sterilized. We both have a difficult time with NFP because it asks so much of us every day about the ONE thing we choose to not often openly discuss; not having children.

Then on the other hand I think about crosses. Maybe that is my cross. I’ve lost 3 kids and don’t want to ever have another pregnancy becuase of what is astronomically likely to happen over and over and over again. In my view a child is a child from conception and I will grieve them as such. If I’m three days pregnant it’s my duty as a mother to NOT put one child of mine ahead of the rest so I will grieve that child. I don’t play favorites.

NFP seems to be the constant salt in the wound. It’s not safe to try for kids even though we grive 3 and still want kids. We aren’t going to try for kids. I could take a pill where I don’t think about what I’m doing but for a few second out of the whole day or I could get a surgery where once I’m healed I don’t have to be reminded every second of the day that I’m trying not to have kids. But the way the church finds acceptable is the most to ask of parents that have lost kids and don’t think it’s safe to have any more. Pretty much every hour I have to think about “I’m trying not to have kids.”

It is the biggest burden of all my choices. So I have to ask myself, “Is this worth it?” One side of me is screaming “No!” But there is the Catholic side of me that doesn’t want to do anything else ONLY becuase it’s a sin and not because it’s the “right decision.”

I wanted to ask if there were some kind of support group or other people to talk to but I never heard anything back. There has to be someone else using this program that is struggling with wanting kids but not feeling they should have kids for medical reasons.

If this is what I’m supposed to be dealing with given my circumstances then who am I to deny myself the redemptive suffering; my “opportunity to suffer as Christ suffered”? I find that in many cases in my own life that the most painful decision to make is usually the right one. I don’t think God tries to give us suffering but perhaps he allows it. I’ve met a few nieve people out there who use all the worst cliche’s and they have preconceived notions based primarily upon Hollywood (w/ a grieving Mother that usually means I’m suicidal, homicidal or I’m going to kidnap your baby) but were they to exsperience the same thing they would no longer be that nieve person.
 
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