A few weeks ago there was a fire at an apartment building in Taipei. When the firemen entered the building, after the fire had been brought under control, they found a woman sitting crouched on the floor of one of the apartments. She was sitting with her knees pulled up to her stomach and her arms wrapped around her legs. She was dead, but when the firemen moved her they discovered that she was heavily pregnant. She was rushed to the hospital where, with TV cameras filming the whole event, a healthy baby girl was delivered.

Such heroic maternal acts never cease to amaze me and are deeds that I cannot fully comprehend. This mother's last act to protect her unborn daughter was something, I think, that a man can never fully appreciate or understand. I wonder, if it was me, would I have saved my unborn child, and risked the life of my wife. I doubt it. In such a situation I am certain that my wife's life would come before that of a child not yet born, although I am equally certain that my wife's decision would be the exact opposite.

If the child had already been born and then a choice had to be made between my wife and child, maybe my decision would be different, but not being a father, yet, I cannot say with certainty. Again, however, I am certain what my wife's decision would be in such a case. A mother's gift of life to a child, born or yet unborn, is the greatest wonder in the world for me, and perhaps by doing so, a mother gives part of her own life in providing life to another and hence the seeming determination that mothers expend in ensuring that that life for which they have given part of themselves continues. A man does not feel that he gives life, but, traditionally at least, provides life, a livelihood, for those in his care, although this role is no longer his sole domain.

Bill Cosby once commented that his father once angrily said to him and his brother, "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out of it!" The more I think about it, it seems to me that this was not his father's right. The baby girl in Taipei was not brought into this world by her father, but by the protection and determination of her mother. Cosby Senior may have had a point if he was a seahorse.

21 April 2004

Dion Marc Delport

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