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Before I read Robert Kastenbaum’s textbook on death and dying, I was not aware that some U. S. newspapers refuse to print the obituaries of stillborn infants. I had to read the statement twice to believe it was there–to be fair to Kastembaum, he does not like that fact any more than I. Although my fraternal twin brother, Jeffrey, was not stillborn, he died two hours after birth of severe bilateral pulmonary hemorrhage. The tendency in society is to downplay the import of such losses and downplay the parents’ grief. “The child really didn’t get a chance to live.” Granted, the child’s life was short, but what follows from that? Is a mother or father’s love somehow missing because a baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth? What gives a newspaper a moral right to deny the existence of such infants to the point of refusing to print their obituaries? I wonder if a society that allows abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy (provided, during that last trimester, that a woman has a doctor certify that the fetus is a threat to her physical and/or “mental” health) can properly value stillbirths or infants dying shortly after birth. Those newspapers that forbid such obituaries are reflecting the values of moral liberals in the wider society, liberals who do not admit the intrinsic value of human life from conception onward. Such an attitude is reflected in bioethicist Peter Singer’s statement that “An adult chimpanzee is of more moral worth than a newborn human infant.” He would go as far as to deny personhood to a newborn until the baby is a week old, and even then Singer does not believe that true moral personhood is present until the child is several years old. American society may not be quite that radical, but when children are considered to be burdens rather than gifts, a stillborn infant can be relegated to secondary status–or perhaps to tertiary status, lower on the scale of value than nonhuman animals.
Recent research on grief suggests that parents, especially mothers, mourn deeply over stillbirths and over infants who die shortly after birth. The least a newspaper can do is to acknowledge their loss by printing their child’s obituary. To do otherwise is to exhibit a fundamental lack of respect for the dignity of the stillborn infant or of the infant who dies shortly after birth. To do otherwise says that the severe grief felt by parents over the infant’s death is misguided. I suggest that it is not the parents who are misguided; it is newspaper editors who refuse to respect the dignity of all human persons, born, stillborn, or unborn.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 19:31:14
You have a fascinating blog. I have just myself started a WordPress blog but have not gone very far with it yet. Most of the topics you list are areas of interest to me as well. I spent most of my adult life as a counselor [ I suppose psychotherapist is the term but like some attorneys for many in their profession I have little respect for most in mine and an especial dislike of those that push drugs.] At one point I became a certified hypnotherapist. This has a certain relevance here as I have at their request done “past life regressions”. I realize that for most Christians reincarnation is not part of their dogma though interestingly the Catholic Church has never officially condemned it. Based on my own personal experience and the researches of persons like Ian Stevenson,MD. I believe it to be more reasonable to believe in reincarnation than not–though of course reasonable does not equal “it is the case”.
Related to this is the abundance of persons who during surgery or due to an accident or heart attack were viewed as brain dead and who yet return with a tale to tell–not infrequently one that relates in detail an operation performed while they were in this condition by a doctor. Perhaps you have viewed this BBC documentary:http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/inspiring/nde_day_i_died_bbc
However, my point is not reincarnation per se but rather the notion of life after death. To me it seems clear that the soul is embodied though in a far subtler material, and that in NDE this body detaches itself from the physical one and has subtle sense organs by means of which it is able to view the world–both the familiar one like the operating room as well as another into which some go for a time before coming back to the physical body.
I have noticed that after someone dies there will be a period of time, and then I will notice their presence. In some cases years. My closest friend died just before he turned 40 and even now I have very little sense of his presence whereas my grandparents seem very much a real part of my life. Of course the materialist would explain this away as memory and desire . . . but these experiences are too vivid and of such practical value that I find this explanation very pale.
Grief seems to be associated with beliefs which are not true. It has a tragic element to it. Of course even when my children come to visit and then leave I feel a kind of grief for a time–usually a day or so. The loss seems permanent but is really not. Without change we could not have a world. A close friend of mine helped start a hospice, is now a nurse who hopes to work for a hospice. We have spent many hours discussing death and dying. As I get older I feel like I am living in both world. And Socrates makes the point that doing philosophy is practicing death. Have I remembered that correctly?