Miscarriage is the Loss of a Real Child

The following is an excerpt of Fr. Frank Pavone’s moving article on miscarriage in a recent issue of LifeSite News:

While there are no magic formulas, there is one fundamental truth that needs to stay front and center: a miscarriage is the loss of a child who is just as real and has just as much value as any other child of any age. A woman who has a miscarriage is a parent who has lost a child, as is the father of the child as well.

In a society which continues to have a legal and cultural blind spot for the unborn, many suffer from the illusion that miscarriage doesn’t grieve a parent as much as the loss of, well, a “real child.” And that is precisely what hurts so much. We can never console someone in grief if we imply, even remotely, that the person they lost wasn’t real.

As someone who has lost seven babies through miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, I can tell you that the grief is real. I began writing in a journal to ease the grief I was feeling as the result of having several miscarriages in a row. This journal led to the writing of my first published article in 1995,
“Five Little Souls in Heaven.”

Thanks, Fr. Pavone, for the moving article.

To read the article in its entirety, please click on the link above.

Photo copyright Ellen Gable Hrkach