Crunchy Grace

I was saddened today to read a story of a mother who lost her baby boy. He was born with a congenital heart defect, struggled to survive and ultimately died of heart failure. This is a sad story, but what saddens me even more is the controversy that has erupted because of this boy's death. Shortly before little seven-week-old Joshua passed away, he was circumcised.

Circumcision may or may not be a hot button topic for you. I never realized how passionate some people are about it, and honestly, I haven't had to think much about it. Through my perusing the Internet, I've seen circumcision referred to as anything from an unnecessary cosmetic surgery to mutilation. In rare cases, the blood loss from a circumcision can cause hemorrhaging, cardiac arrest, and death. Many crunchy mamas have expressed outrage that this family would have made the decision to circumcise their son, and have gone so far to publicly attack and blame this poor mother for being responsible for her own son's death. There are bloggers that have taken pictures of her son from her blog (without her permission), and posted them on their own blogs along with inaccurate information about her son's death, and then proceeded to lambaste her and her decision to have her son circumcised. 

Where is the grace? This poor woman lost her son. Whether his circumcision was responsible for his death, even in part (health care professionals caring for her son assured her that her son's death had nothing to do with his circumcision), should the response in any circumstance, that ends in such tragedy, be to throw stones? And, yet, ruthlessly, some individuals who are against circumcision have chosen to make an example of this grieving family.

Heaven forbid that something happen to your child that would cause your parenting to be called into question. Most parents make decisions that they believe to be the very best for their child, and their intentions are done out of love. How can anyone believe their parenting is so far superior that it warrants responding to the death of a mother's son with righteous indignance? How sad that compassion and love was not the first response.