Mother- Frances Inglis Photo: Central News
Across the Pond, The Telegraph brings us the story of Frances Inglis, 57, a mother who was training to be a nurse and was driven ‘insane’ by the thought that her brain damaged son Tom was suffering. Inglis killed her son with a heroin overdose, after searching the internet for methods of performing euthanasia. Perhaps our readers from England can fill us in on some of the details not accounted for in the Telegraph story.
There are multiple layers of tragedy here in this story. The most obvious is a mother driven mad by the thought that her child was locked in a seemingly endless state of suffering, despite assurances from the physicians that he would improve.
The second layer of tragedy is the collective consciousness that is setting in regarding euthanasia, and is inversely proportional to the authentic participation in and witness to Christian Faith. Where Christian faith and hope are absent, the cult of death grows strong. It becomes the answer to all of life’s deepest challenges.
That in turn leads to the next level of tragedy, no room was left for the grace of God. As Father Anthony Padovano said of the human heart, ” It breathes the air of hope and is suffocated in despair”.
Therein lies the greatest tragedy of all. A mother whose heart was suffocated in despair took the life she brought into the world. A permanent solution to what might only have been a temporary problem.
Coming Home 
What a horrible shame. That poor boy. You are absolutely right about the absence of God in one’s life creating the illusion that death is the answer to every pain and suffering.
“All they who hate me love death”. Proverbs 8:36
Great verse Bethany. I’m using it from now on. Thanks 🙂
it’s not only that it is the fear of suffering that makes people support euthanasia, abortion etc.
we have become a people afraid to suffer and see no merit in suffering….
I see no merit in suffering for its own sake.
I see merit in suffering for a purpose, and I mean a greater purpose than my own salvation.
What could be greater than my own salvation? The least I can do to ease another person’s life here on earth, let along their salvation. My salvation is in God’s hands. If my suffering has a goal, if I am suffering because I or someone I care for, or a principle I care for, will be advanced that is worth it. Nobody should suffer just for the intrinsic good of suffering. There is no intrinsic good.
There are rare occasions where a baby is born literally with no brain. I would have no moral compunction about putting such a brainless body to sleep. But in general, I have a problem with euthenasia simply because there is too much we cannot know. Withholding complex technical life support is fine with me. Let nature take its course, let God decide. First, do no surgery.
I would need to know more about the condition this woman’s son was in to know what I really think of this specific case. Brain-damaged is not brainless. Was he born damaged? How badly damaged? Did he fall and sustain injuries? It doesn’t make a difference whether killing him was OK, it wasn’t, but it makes a difference in how much sympathy I have for the mother.
S, how do you know that there is no purpose in the suffering of a baby with anencephaly, or the suffering of the mother who loves her child with anencephaly? How do you know that that child will not ease the suffering of another human being through being here?
http://babyfaithhope.blogspot.com
A baby with anencephaly who had a purpose and who has comforted and given hope to thousands.
how do we even know that a baby with anencephaly suffers?
What do we as humans really know about the suffering of others?
Suffering is a mystery.
Baby Faith Hope may have suffered near the end of her life. Certainly it was very very difficult for Faith’s mom. But baby Faith Hope taught her and even those of us who didn’t personally know her, about suffering, what it means to really love someone and about sacrifice.
Bethany raises an excellent point here. The suffering of others calls us to action, to love. Our response to suffering is how we perfect ourselves, and is the basis on which Jesus says He will judge us in Matthew 25.
Yes, I know there are mothers who love their anancephalic babies, and I have neither motive nor cause to take that away from them. I tend to believe God was merciful not to prolong this baby’s life, but to take her home while she was still a cute, cuddly little bundle, so her mother can always remember her that way, but that’s just my sense of it. A grown adult body with no brain is a very different companion to care for. If Faith lived to be 55 years old, and her mother continued to love her, that is between Faith, her mother, and God. It doesn’t make for a universal rule, one size fits all, every family has to be just like Faith’s family.
One of the things I least admire Mother Teresa for is the statement that the purpose of the poor is to provide opportunity for rich people to perform acts of charity. Similarly, I don’t believe in creating opportunities for love by inflicting suffering — that is darn close to a spiritual Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, writ large.
I don’t know that such baby will not relieve someone else’s suffering by being here. I do know that just because she is right for one mother, doesn’t mean she is right for all mothers. What I oppose is a standard rule that all families must embrace this suffering, love this baby, appreciate the disease, etc. If it were my pregnancy, and if my wife chose to terminate the pregnancy, I would support her decision. Baby Faith’s mother didn’t have to make the same decision, and didn’t, and she never regretted her decision.
I think you misunderstand Mother Theresa. God himself stated that the poor will always be with us.
I have read a number of books about Mother Theresa. In one she stated that just as some people are given wonderful physical gifts of beauty or some are given great intellectual gifts it is the same with wealth.
In the Christian religion then, if you are wealthy you must share with those who are less fortunate.
But what Mother Theresa meant is that the poor offer those of us (and most of us in the Western world qualify) the opportunity to thank God for his extreme generosity in terms of material goods. We have much more than we could ever use and thus we need to share.
When we have great wealth, as we do in the West, we tend to forget God and to forget just how little and precarious our existence in this world is.
We also forget that this world will pass away.
The poor and the weak remind us of the fragility of life.
“I don’t know that such baby will not relieve someone else’s suffering by being here. I do know that just because she is right for one mother, doesn’t mean she is right for all mothers. What I oppose is a standard rule that all families must embrace this suffering, love this baby, appreciate the disease, etc. If it were my pregnancy, and if my wife chose to terminate the pregnancy, I would support her decision.”
It is not that a baby “relieves” someone’s suffering. You are looking at the back of the tapestry!
It is that the baby brings such immense joy into a family’s/couple’s life.
I believe that God gives each baby to the right mother – that baby is perfect for that particular mother.
So a mother aborting a handicapped baby, IMO, is saying to God, I reject your gift. It’s not perfect and I want that perfect baby. But what is perfection? Is it physical perfection? What if that baby goes on to develop schizophrenia at age 15?
And it’s not “a standard rule”. It is the mark of a civilized society that the weakest members are protected. Even animals do this for heaven’s sake!
That is why ALL human life is precious.
The question about relieving suffering was posed by another participant in the discussion. I merely responded to it. Not every baby brings immense joy into a family’s life, nor does every baby find immense joy in the family it is born to. If we could identify with perfection which mother’s would find joy coming into her life from a baby, and sterilize the rest, I might accept your premise. But we can’t.
How do you know that a severely handicapped baby is a gift from God? Did God intend for mercury to poison our waters, so that children would be born without limbs? No, that is something we did to ourselves. More likely God is anguished about the damaged condition of these babies, and the thalidomide babies… Perhaps God wants us, collectively, to receive and raise these babies so we will learn not to dump mercury in the water and take thalidomide for morning after sickness… or maybe not.
If God gives every baby the right mother, then God already knows which mother is going to abort, and doesn’t bother much with what is growing within her. Logical, but logic isn’t enough, is it?
Some very good points here worth remembering about the absence of faith and hope.
I’m becoming a little curious why so many people pile on to every post about abortion, but when Gerard posts something like “Purity and Play” almost nobody bothers to say anything.