I can't imagine the loss of a child and I don't want to. Whether the child has been born yet or not is immaterial. The loss is still a total loss, a future and a hope snuffed out before time. I grieve for those families who have experienced this. As for our Christian response, doesn't Romans 12:15 tell us to weep with those who weep?

The loss of miscarriage is real and painful. I've been there. But if we want to talk about ethical/theological inconsistency: If life really begins at conception, we should also be working through the issue that 50% of pregnancies do not make it to term, with many women/couples not even being aware they were ever pregnant? Should we be mourning all of those deaths, even if unknown? Do all those embryos go to heaven? Or maybe there actually is some progression of life from fertilization through viability?

Thank you so much for this post. My husband and I miscarried October 2012 - our first child - after trying to get pregnant for two years. Like you, I'm sure I said something hurtful (without intending to cause pain, of course) to a miscarriage mama, but now that I've been there, I see the loss for what it is: earth shattering. Important. Deeply wounding. Difficult to heal from emotionally. Etc. I understood those things on an intellectual level before, but walking through that grief has truly opened my eyes to not just the pain for the parents, but to the insensitivity and mysterious lack of importance that many in the church seem to lend to miscarriages. Today I blogged my thoughts on your fantastic article (http://thejinglejangle.blogspot.com), linking up to this entry and asking my friends/readers for a healthy dialogue on the topic. I hope that deeper understanding and kinder words are brought about from it. Thank you again for your thought-provoking, important, timely article!

Thank you so much for this post. My husband and I miscarried October 2012 - our first child - after trying to get pregnant for two years. Like you, I'm sure I said something hurtful (without intending to cause pain, of course) to a miscarriage mama, but now that I've been there, I see the loss for what it is: earth shattering. Important. Deeply wounding. Difficult to heal from emotionally. Etc. I understood those things on an intellectual level before, but walking through that grief has truly opened my eyes to not just the pain for the parents, but to the insensitivity and mysterious lack of importance that many in the church seem to lend to miscarriages. Today I blogged my thoughts on your fantastic article, linking up to this site. Hopefully a better dialogue is started and responses are kinder. http://thejinglejangle.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-grieving-miscarriag e-as-christians.html Thank you again for your thought-provoking, important, timely article!

I feel all across the board people need to realize the hurt families have after miscarriages and not criticize those women who are grieving the loss of their unborn. Their pain is real.

There is never a time when a person will revisit the loss of a child (no matter which state of development) and feel no sense of loss. The parsing of developmental stages into palatable language does not, despite the effort, relieve the memory of loss. We're talking about a powerful emotion that echoes through the limbic system enough to generate its own properties of recoil and emotional avoidance. The question of who the child would have been will never cease to linger. As with any loss, the only thing that changes is our ability to deal with the loss in a matter that doesn't continue to tear at the heart.

(cont from below) Sorry I could not fit this in the last post - (link to a meta-analysis of IVF and major malformations completed in 2011 by Case Western. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21625967)

(continued from below) And, the studies on the negative effects of the children are also inconclusive – you often have older mothers using IVF, multiple births, pre-term births…the best studies have to account for all those factors. And even those that do show little to no increased risk. But, again, the Catholic/Christian position is that all life is sacred – including those with disabilities, disease, genetic disorders, etc. so this discussion could be expanded far beyond the controversy of IVF. Whether parents should conceive a child knowing it could have an increased risk of any type of disorder is an ethical issue that could apply to any parent - Christian, Catholic, atheist, or otherwise. And if you deem it unethical to conceive a child with increased risks – what does that mean for older mothers? Those foregoing birth control even as they age? Should all parents have genetic tests prior to their attempts to conceive? Those who undergo IVF are required to.

I'm not Catholic so in my case, I'll claim ignorance and poor catechism. :) But I stand by my position that these perceptions persist, even among the Catholic faithful, even if they are misguided. Regarding the discussion on AR and health risks, I have experienced OHSS - uncomfortable but almost always temporary. Regarding increased cancer risk for the mother - the studies are far from conclusive and the majority show no increased risk in breast or uterine cancer. But, in either case, I'm not sure that negative health risks for the mother are the correct basis for foregoing AR techniques. Especially since the Catholic position against birth control results in multigravidity - and the health risks associated with a high number of pregnancies and childbirth are MUCH more established than any health risks associated with IVF.

NoVA, In answer to your question, in all seriousness, there are three basic explanations for that: 1) Ignorance 2) Poor catechesis 3) Rebellion If you really want to understand the Catholic position on these matters, you need to start with three documents: 1) Humanae Vitae 2) Donum Vitae 3) Dignitas Personae From there, it would be a hood idea to,look at the health effects of pursuing various ART procedures - effects on both the woman and her future children, including OHSS and cancer for the woman as well as a doubled risk of serious birth defects for children conceived via ART. I know CT isn't Catholic but it's time for Protestants to recognize that HV was the single most prophetic religious document of the 20th century. (Not fond of the new design that removes formatting when comments are posted)