how bodies matter in miscarriage

October 30th, 2018 | 1 min read

Tish Harrison Warren has a moving and beautiful essay at Christianity Today about her quest to honor the body of her unborn child:

Our doctor wasn’t a jerk or insensitive to our grief. He was professional; we liked him. But he worked in a system. In the very room where I lay, focusing on breathing while our son was slowly extracted from my body, our doctor and his colleagues regularly perform abortions. Though our doctor expressed sympathy for our loss, the hospital as a larger institution couldn’t pivot quickly from seeing our baby as a meaningless bundle of cells to seeing him as a human being. I was left, disoriented by grief, to navigate a system that didn’t quite see our lost son’s body as something to be honored.

I’ve performed the procedure that Tish describes here and while fortunately in Africa we are a bit more free to give parents their child’s body, it still fills me with a holy, fearful awe to think that one day I will see these children made whole in the Resurrection.

Matthew Loftus

Matthew Loftus teaches and practices Family Medicine in Baltimore and East Africa. His work has been featured in Christianity Today, Comment, & First Things and he is a regular contributor for Christ and Pop Culture. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.MatthewAndMaggie.org

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how bodies matter in miscarriage

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