God’s Gift and a Pair of Scissors

Posted by Donald R. McClarey on December 18th, 2012

This is a syndicated post from The American Catholic. [Read the original article...]

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All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His
creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own.

Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation

A pair of scissors saved a “preemie’s” life in England:

But when they put her on the scales she weighed 1lb, the minimum weight for a baby to be considered viable, so they fought to keep her alive.

It was only when she was safely on a ventilator that doctors discovered a pair of scissors had been accidentally left on the scales and that Maddalena actually only weighed 382g.

The baby is doing fine now.

Maddalena’s mother Kate, 31, of Lewes, East Sussex, told The Sun: ‘We never thought we’d ever bring Maddalena home.

‘She now weighs 5½lbs and is getting stronger by the day. She’s our little miracle and we’re so glad to have her home in time for Christmas.’

She and her husband Renato, a plumber, had already suffered heartache when Maddalena’s twin Isabella died a few weeks after the sisters were born.

Go here to the Daily Mail to read the rest. But for that pair of scissors the baby would have been left to die. Caring for premature infants born at 23 weeks as this child was is always an uphill struggle. The youngest surviving premature infant was 21 weeks and five days at birth. However, as technology advances infants are being saved for whom there would have been no hope in the past. What is chilling about this story is the willingness of the physicians involved to enforce an arbitrary guidline with bureaucratic rigor, rather than to try to save the child’s life. None of this is surprising since the English National Health Service has been starving premature and ailing babies to death for some time.

At this time of the year we remember the coming of God to us as one of us. The mystery of the Incarnation underlines the sanctity of innocent human life, which God gives us as His precious gift. Each baby is a miracle in miniature, and should not be dependent upon a pair of scissors in order for us to see the child as the glorious manifestation of God’s love for us.