Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty
A THEOLOGIAN was once asked to define a mother. Let us look at his answer. It is boring but revealing of a certain kind of academic mindset.
He said a mother is ‘a woman who, having provided an ovum that is subsequently fertilised by an external agent, prepares it for infusion of a soul and nurtures it from her own bodily substance ‘til it can be physically separated from her’. On hearing him, a young woman commented: “Obviously the poor fellow never had a mother.”
Many theologians write a dry and abstract language that clouds rather than creates understanding. Some, in the current conservative Church climate, write either to escape ecclesiastical censure or to further clerical ambition.
What I find absent in much theology I find present in the work of Ann Thurstan. That is a connection between life as it is experienced and academic concepts. She links her theology to life.
In her book, ‘Because of Her Testimony: The Word in Female Experience’, she reflects on her own experience of giving birth. She claims that birthing mothers image the creative activity of God. The God who created the earth is found in the ‘most intimate and hidden place – the womb’. For women, there is the sense that giving birth is a sacred act, literal emptying of herself: “The more one gives oneself over to the event the more strength one receives and the easier it becomes. The more one empties oneself of one’s own preoccupations and attempts to home in on what is actually happening within, the more one is able to participate in that most creative of acts. You die a little death to yourself in order that your child may live.”
She goes on: “The dark side is very much there. You reach a point which is almost despair. ‘Why hast thou forsaken me.’ That very moment is the point of no return. There will be a birth. From then onwards the pain has a tangible purpose; the mother bears down and every fibre of her being is drawn into the effort of helping her child towards its new life – its own life.
The triumphant cry of those around proclaim the ‘crowning’ of the head. The task is almost accomplished. Into your hands you take a slimy, bloodied, crumpled, living being. You have helped to give life to this life, you have shared in creation, you are overwhelmed with feelings of love, of joy, of an irrepressible urge to praise. At this moment the mother is truly full of grace!”
Anyone who studies Irish Catholic parish registers in the 19th century will soon become aware of the high number of mothers who died during childbirth. The availability of antibiotics, since the 1930s, means that childbirth is a relatively safe experience for women in the developed world.
Not so in the third world where birth often takes place under the shadow of death. In sub-Saharan Africa one in every 16 women dies in childbirth. In Britain the comparable ratio is one death in every 8,200 births.
The Guardian journalist, Madeleine Bunting, has written that many women in this part of Africa ‘die in a dark mud hut with a terrified relative or on the back of a bicycle or a pick-up truck being rushed over bumpy roads to a hospital where there are neither the doctors nor drugs to treat them’.
In the year 2000 186 countries committed themselves to a 75 per cent reduction in maternal mortality rates by 2005. There has been little progress in the attainment of this goal. Part of the explanation for the failure is that there is controversy over the best approach.
In the remote regions of Africa most childbirths take place in the presence of a traditional birthing attendant.
Levels of skills vary hugely. Most of the doctors and obstetricians are disdainful of their efforts. They advocate investment in hospitals, clinics, obstetricians and midwives.
Others argue that such developments will take too long. Meanwhile mothers die. They propose investment in traditional birthing attendants and obstetricians.
Possibly the most valuable proposal comes from Professor Anthony Costello, who has spent the past decade working in Malawi. He argues that there is a relatively cheap and easy way to reduce significantly the number of women dying in childbirth. He claims that traditional birthing attendants and community health volunteers need a maternity kit with two critical drugs: antibiotics to treat infection and misoprostal to treat postpartum haemorrhage. If these cheap drugs were made widely available, lives would be saved immediately.
Ann Pettifor, the veteran human rights campaigner, wants women in the developed world to campaign on behalf of their vulnerable sisters in the third world. I think the campaign should not be confined to women.
Those of us who proclaim to be Christian should know that at the heart of Christianity is the challenge to care for the vulnerable.
The Government decision last week to cut state aid to the third world, as part of its package of measures to combat the recession, is lamentable. Should we try to force a reversal of the decision?
