Made for This. Mary Haseltine

believe. As Saint John Paul II stated, “Concern for the child, even before birth, from the first moment of conception and then throughout the years of infancy and youth, is the primary and fundamental test of the relationship of one human being to another.”⁸

      Both our intentions in our decisions and the way we do things matter greatly. We don’t believe that the ends justify the means.⁹ We have to be concerned with the “how” and take great care to ensure that every mother and baby is treated with dignity, that birth practices are based on solid science and evidence, and that God’s original design of creation and natural law are respected throughout pregnancy and birth. We can reject the lies that birth is ugly, gross, shameful, or that it doesn’t really matter how women and babies are treated as long as both are alive at the end. We as a Church can choose to claim birth again for God, recognizing that it is his design first, truly believing that he really planned it this way, and he is the great designer behind it all.

       The Dignity of Every Baby at Every Moment

      From the very moment of conception, Christianity recognizes that human person with a life just as valuable and important as that of any other person on Earth. No matter the circumstances surrounding conception, every baby is a unique and irreplaceable human person willed by God for his or her own sake. As Saint John Paul wrote in his 1994 Letter to Families: “God ‘willed’ man from the very beginning, and God ‘wills’ him in every act of conception and every human birth.”¹⁰ That reverence for every life needs to mark every single birth.

      In the Christian understanding of the family, parents are not autocrats, and the worth of the individual members is not dictated by hierarchy or seniority. All members of the family are “equal in dignity,” and parents are obliged to “regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons.”¹¹ The Gospel message transforms our understanding of each individual soul, helping us to recognize them as the image of God, regardless of age, ability, size, gender, race, or any other characteristic. “Inspired and sustained by the new commandment of love, the Christian family welcomes, respects and serves every human being, considering each one in his or her dignity as a person and as a child of God.”¹²

      This understanding of the dignity of every single baby must infiltrate how we approach our births as Christian women. The baby — unborn, being born, and newly born — has the same rights and dignity as the mother, father, doctor, midwife, nurse, or anyone else in the birth room and must be treated accordingly. In fact, Catholic teaching would take this one step further: the baby should receive in some sense greater deference as the weakest and “poorest” in the room. The message of Christ (and the teaching of the Church) contains a preferential option for the poor, which refers not just to the economically poor, but to the weak and vulnerable of the world. Inspired by the beatitudes and the command of Christ in Matthew 25, we believe we have a Christian duty to protect, honor, and defer to the weakest among us.¹³ Whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him, too.

      In pregnancy and birth, then, how can we best honor the baby, taking care to treat him or her as someone with complete dignity and worthy of compassion and respect? In their littleness and need, babies become another Christ among us. We as mothers can choose to recognize that reality with the choices we make in birth and in our attitudes surrounding their personhood. We can choose to honor that reality with how we approach our pregnancy, talk about the person within us, and defend his or her rights as equal to our own.

      Before, during, and after birth, each child has an experience all his or her own. We understand very little about the unborn and newly born brain, but we do know that babies experience pain, fear, pleasure, happiness, comfort, and much more, possibly amplified since they do not have the context of experience or cognitive reasoning to temper their understanding of what may be happening to them. Their experience of the birth can and should be taken into account. It certainly helps us grow in compassion and love when we try to understand what the birth experience must be like for them. What a testimony it is to the inherent value not only of that unique individual life but of every life when we treat the tiniest among us with tremendous compassion and concern. As mothers, we can take our babies’ experience into account when making birth choices, erring on the side of life, compassion, and honor for their dignity. After all, our babies’ needs, emotions, and experience matter and are just as valid as our own.

      Do we see the importance of the baby being treated with respect, love, and dignity as a complete and irreplaceable human being valued by God? Do we respect women and allow them to make informed choices about their bodies and their children? Do we use real science and a complete understanding of biology in our approach and methods? Do we recognize the profound moment in front of us as the mother welcomes the new child into the family and bow to that mystery before us? Do we do everything we can to respect the way God designed it to happen and respect the order of the family as God created it? Do we treat every mother and baby with the reverence and love they deserve? We cannot claim a culture of life until the answer to all of these is a confident yes.

      Instinctively, we know that birth should be a joyous and happy event, and we can see its beauty — from a distant standpoint, at least. Can we dare to step a little closer and choose not to be scandalized by the sheer physicality and rawness of it all? Can we continue to see its beauty in God’s plan? Just as womanhood is beautiful, marriage is beautiful, conception is beautiful, and motherhood is beautiful, so the end result of all those things — the act of birth — is also beautiful. Really. When we view birth as the natural result of the divine plan for marriage and family and a reflection of the value we place on human life, then we can see why it is entirely appropriate and fitting for Christians to care … and to do so deeply.

      “The history of every human being passes through the threshold of a woman’s motherhood,” wrote John Paul II.¹⁴ This means that the entire history of humanity, every person made in the image and likeness of God, passes through the rite of birth. There is not one human being on this Earth who is excluded from the issue. Physical birth is the avenue through which God himself chooses to continue his divine plan of love to multiply the human race. The more we acknowledge and reverence the beauty of birth, the more we will create a society where every life, every baby, every mother and father, and ultimately God himself, is revered and celebrated. Transforming how we view and approach birth affects the individual lives in front of us, and indeed, it can also transform the world.

      Over and above such outstanding moments, there is an everyday heroism, made up of gestures of sharing, big or small, which build up an authentic culture of life.…

      Part of this daily heroism is also the silent but effective and eloquent witness of all those “brave mothers who devote themselves to their own family without reserve, who suffer in giving birth to their children and who are ready to make any effort, to face any sacrifice, in order to pass on to them the best of themselves.” In living out their mission “these heroic women do not always find support in the world around them. On the contrary, the cultural models frequently promoted and broadcast by the media do not encourage motherhood. In the name of progress and modernity the values of fidelity, chastity, sacrifice, to which a host of Christian wives and mothers have borne and continue to bear outstanding witness, are presented as obsolete.… We thank you, heroic mothers, for your invincible love! We thank you for your intrepid trust in God and in his love. We thank you for the sacrifice of your life.”

      — Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 86

      The Feminine Genius of Birth

       “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”— Genesis 1:27

      A woman can certainly have a great birth experience without choosing to delve into the deeper meaning behind it all. But understanding more about God’s original design for us as women allows us to appreciate his plan more fully and integrate it more intentionally