Editor’s Note: This blogpost touches on miscarriage. If your heart is too tender to enter into this topic today, please be gentle with yourself. We will see you in the next post.

To be open to life is to be open to love. To love as Christ loves is to accept suffering, even death.

For those walking the path of infertility or child loss at any age or stage, this openness to love is lived in the body and carried in the heart. From the moment a child exists, no matter how briefly, love is real. And so is the possibility of loss, including the loss of dreams never realized.

Experiencing infertility and miscarriage have profoundly reshaped how I understand what it truly means to be pro-life.

Often, couples without children are assumed not to want them. Those who choose to be “childfree” tend to speak openly about it, while many who long for children carry their grief quietly. Behind that silence are years of prayer, longing, medical appointments, unanswered questions, and hopes deferred.

I have been in Catholic spaces where conversations abruptly stop once people learn we have no children. I have listened as others proudly recount how many children they have, unaware of how painful such comments can be for couples who desire children deeply. These encounters reveal how limited our imagination can be, both about what a family looks like and about what kinds of suffering may be hidden in plain sight.

The absence of children from the marital embrace does not diminish the significance of marital love. There are real graces and fruits that still flow from the sacred covenant of marriage. As the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) mentions, “The Church teaches that the sexual union of husband and wife is meant to express the full meaning of love, its power to bind a couple together and its openness to new life.” 

Pope John Paul II affirmed this truth directly to couples experiencing infertility in 1982: “You are no less loved by God; your love for each other is complete and fruitful when it is open to others…to the needs of the world.” John 12:24 also states that, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” 

Fruitfulness and new life are not only a reference to physical children. Fruitfulness includes genuinely displaying the qualities that reflect Christ’s character. For example: 

  • Cooking a meal for an individual or family experiencing hardship 
  • Praying
  • Encouraging and supporting your spouse, working together, showing compassion and kindness to your spouse, and generally creating a unified and harmonious atmosphere full of love
  • Living your life in a way that attracts others to God
  • Growing in the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control)
  • Serving your community through volunteering, and talents bestowed by God
  • Listening to and following God’s Will for your life

Openness to Life is Openness to Loss

This past year taught me one of the hardest truths of all: being open to new life also means being open to death.

We often speak in pro-life circles about openness to life, usually in the form of a baby. What we speak far less about is the vulnerability that openness requires. To say “yes” to God’s gift of life is also to say “yes” to the possibility that the life we are gifted may be heartbreakingly short, or that no physical life may come at all. Miscarriage makes this reality painfully clear.

Our “yes” to God is a willingness to love without guarantees. Love always risks loss. After experiencing our own miscarriage, I wish this truth were named more honestly in pro-life spaces, not as a deterrent, but as an acknowledgment of and support for carrying the cross that may accompany the gift of life. This is the cost of discipleship Christ speaks of when He says in Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” 

Since our loss, we have been asked when we plan to “try again.” While often well intentioned, this question overlooks the layered reality of grief after miscarriage. Are we ready to endure another potential loss? Will future pregnancies, if we are blessed with them, end the same way? Healing takes time, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Grief should not be rushed or redirected toward outcomes others find more comfortable. “Can a woman forget her infant…?” says Isaiah 49:15.

Our Child Lived and Mattered

No parent is ever prepared for their child to die, no matter how early the loss occurs. Grief is not measured in weeks or milestones. The Catechism affirms this truth clearly: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception” (CCC 2270).

We are deeply sorrowful over our recent miscarriage after many years of primary infertility. The pain does not disappear. Instead, our lives slowly grow around this grief, allowing space for healing without erasing what was lost. Sorrow does not negate meaning. The Church doesn’t ask us to deny this suffering, but to bring it to Christ: “By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering” (CCC 1505).

Our child’s death does not mean they should never have existed. Their life was not a mistake (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” Jeremiah 1:5). God willed them into being for a purpose, and we were invited to cooperate with that will. Even in death, their life has meaning (“For to me life is Christ, and death is gain,” Philippians 1:21).

We entrust our child to the mercy of God, confident that their brief life continues to bear fruit in ways we cannot yet see.

When Miracles Don’t Look Like We Expected

One of the most painful questions after miscarriage is this: Why would God allow us to conceive after all this time, only to take our child away?

Scripture reminds us that God’s ways often defy our expectations: As Isaiah 55:8 states, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” 

We tend to imagine miracles only in terms of outcomes we can hold, raise, plan, and see. But the miracle of life is not negated by its brevity. The length of a life does not determine its value, just as the ability to conceive or raise children does not define a person’s worth.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson captured this sentiment in his poem In Memoriam A. H. H., written after the sudden death of his closest friend: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” Love, he concluded, is a miracle worth its cost.

A Pro-Life Witness That Makes Room for Grief

Most miscarriages occur in the first trimester, the same stage in which most abortions take place. Yet support for pregnancy loss remains minimal. While enormous cultural energy is spent debating abortion, countless women and families who desperately desire children grieve quietly and alone. 

The pro-life movement sometimes, unintentionally, elevates babies to the point that other forms of dignity are forgotten. Babies are precious, yes. But they must never become the prize, the measure of worth, or the sole lens through which we define pro-life witness. 

Spiritual parenthood is real and fruitful, yet it is rarely spoken of outside references to clergy or religious life. When biological parenthood is overemphasized, people can feel pressured toward outcomes or technologies that may not align with God’s plan (e.g. artificial reproductive technologies). Love and desire for children should not lead us to pursue in-vitro fertilization (IVF), which is inconsistent with God’s plan for marriage as well as destroying embryos (children) at a higher rate than abortion.

If the pro-life movement is truly committed to defending life, it must also lead the way in caring for those who mourn children they never got to hold. The pro-life movement should not ignore couples who experience infertility and/or loss – these couples are pro-life, too.

Openness to Life Means Openness to the Cross

In a culture that fears suffering, dignity is often equated with control and comfort. The Church teaches something radically different. Suffering does not strip a person of dignity. Life remains sacred even when it is fragile, dependent, or painful. As the Catechism reminds us, “Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end” (CCC 2258).

This conviction stands in contrast to a culture that seeks to eliminate suffering at any cost, even when that cost is life itself. The Church is clear: “Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable” (CCC 2277). Love expressed through suffering is not something to be erased. It is something to be honored.

The culture of death chooses what is easiest, fastest, and least painful. The Gospel calls us to something harder and infinitely more beautiful. Openness to life is openness to love, and openness to love means openness to suffering.

Christ shows us this. His Passion reveals that love and suffering are not opposites but are united. Through Him, suffering is redeemed, and even death does not have the final word.

Written by an anonymous Springs in the Desert writer.