Baby Milagros was born on April 1st. Born with no arms, only one leg and missing a significant portion of her lower jaw, she was left by her mother at the hospital in which she was born under the state of Florida’s Safe Haven Law.
This law allows mothers of newborns anonymously to leave their babies with one of several designated organizations (hospitals, police and fire departments, etc.) and disappear without fear of prosecution. On April 8th I received an email — as did thousands of others on various pro-life email lists — describing Baby Milagros’s situation and asking for adoptive parents to come forward before she became a ward of the state of Florida (and, it was feared, a target for euthanasia). I forwarded this email to as many other pro-life people as I could think of.
And then I prayed. Hard. I searched my heart: If God was calling my husband and me to adopt this little one, would we accept her? Would we trust God to give us the faith, the strength, the resources to care for her even though it would mean a total reordering of our life? Would we willingly face the disgust and scorn that she would elicit from friends and family who do not share our views on the value of every human life?
April 9th I received an email back from one of the couples to whom I had forwarded Milagros's story:
Many thanks for forwarding this message. It prompted a tear-filled discussion for our family during which many deep issues were raised relating to the Gospel. For me, it caused me to recall the words of Blessed Mother Theresa at the Prayer Breakfast: “Give until it hurts.” We pray that this talk will open all of our hearts to respond the next time the Lord presents an opportunity.
On April 10th I spoke to Nick Silvero of A Safe Haven for Newborns. A Safe Haven is a Florida non-profit organization dedicated to protecting vulnerable newborns by providing anonymous alternatives to abandonment. It was Nick Silvero who had originally circulated the email request for adoptive parents, and I learned that he had received more than 200 hundred calls (and even more emails), from as far as far away as the Netherlands, asking for more information and offering loving homes for Baby Milagros. And how many hundreds (thousands?) more of us did not call and yet were touched and challenged and have drawn closer to God? How many of us have searched our hearts and grown more willing to serve Him in the weak and vulnerable? And all because of her.
Little Milagros reminds me of another voiceless individual — Theresa Marie Schiavo — who touched millions upon millions and who inspired us to pray, to fast, to keep vigil and to speak out against the killing of the helpless innocent.
The danger in euthanasia is not only, or even primarily, that it threatens and devalues the lives of the weak — the very old, the very young, the ill, the disabled — but that it robs every life of meaning.
[W]hatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction…they poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. (Gaudium et Spes 27)
Because what is a meaningful life? We hope an individual will be born who will discover a cure for cancer and AIDS, we hope for someone who will negotiate peace in the war-torn regions of our world, for someone who will find a way to end poverty and hunger… but why? Why prolong anyone's life unless there is some reason beyond simply being biologically functional?
For any life, any achievement, to have meaning it must be directed towards a higher purpose, and we find this purpose spelled out for us by our beloved late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae:
By contemplating the precious blood of Christ, the sign of His self-giving love, the believer learns to recognize and appreciate the almost divine dignity of every human being and can exclaim with ever-renewed and grateful wonder: “How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he 'gained so great a Redeemer' and if God 'gave His only Son' in order that man 'should not perish but have eternal life'! Furthermore, Christ's blood reveals to man that his greatness, and therefore his vocation, consists in the sincere gift of self.” (25)
Baby Milagros and Terri Schiavo inspired a tremendous outpouring of self-sacrificing love and challenged so many of us to examine our consciences, draw closer to God, grow in our capacity to make this “sincere gift of self” and so live more fully our human “greatness” and “vocation.”
What more meaningful lives could there possibly be?
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Sara Fox Peterson is a wife, mother and writer. You can read her (more or less) regular column at http://www.catholicmom.com/nfp.htm.
