Angels in the Wilderness
Letter to a Daughter About Giving Up a Child
Dear Hannah,
Yes, I can understand the question you raised when we were talking on the phone the other night. There is something frightening about bringing a child into the world, and I’m not sure we’d ever do it if nature didn’t just get the better of us. I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of replying on the spot to your comment, so I thought I’d try to organize my ideas better by putting them down on paper.
When taking up the topic of abortion in class over the years, I’ve often wondered: Why would a pregnant woman rather snuff out the life of her unborn child than complete the pregnancy and put the child up for adoption? I’ve asked precisely that question countless times, and the same answer always comes back from a good number of students: “I couldn’t bear to go through life not knowing what happened to my child.”
I understand this, yet I don’t understand it. Here’s what I don’t understand: How can we miss the fact that we are subtly making ourselves rather than that child (whose young life is to be snuffed out) the victim? Is this a way of avoiding the unpleasant truth that we are indeed attached to this child?
For, after all, if we were not, uncertainty about the child’s future could not touch us so deeply. There’s an egregious act of bad faith involved in failing to see and reflect upon this—in failing to see our own attachment and in forgetting who is really the victim here.
Still, there is also something that I do understand: It is frightening to be so deeply attached to one for whose life we can offer no assurance or guarantee. As the old minister, John Ames, reflects in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:
It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness.
(Did you catch the biblical allusion? Have a look at Genesis 21.)
This is true even for all of us who do not give up our children but try, instead, to raise them. We too “can secure so little . . . even in the best of circumstances”—and often circumstances are far from the best.
Realizing this, we should think seriously not only about the bad faith I noted above but also—perhaps even more—about our desire to shape and mold the next generation. We don’t want to bring home just any baby, much less a baby with obvious “defects.” So we test prenatally, we screen in advance, we refine our ability to determine not only illnesses but also characteristics, such as sex, earlier and earlier in pregnancy.
Gilbert Meilaender is the Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. His books include Neither Beast nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (Encounter Books) and Should We Live Forever?: The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Eerdmans). He is a Lutheran.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
18.8—October 2005
European Islam & the Doubtful Future of Christian Europe by William Murchison
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
