Andrew Miller: A mother’s pain is beyond anything the warring men of power can comprehend

Sperm meets egg, and a sequence of risks begins.

We try to rig the game toward safety and health for our families, but these elusive goals can be shifting.

Some years ago, we went to see a GP in Melbourne. This practice was in an old, confused chrome and ceramic tile building with an eccentric atrium. Like a casino, it seemed to intentionally hinder orientation. I felt like dropping a trail of breadcrumbs between the stringy potted palms on the mezzanine; something was up.

Shunted from one oddly generic neon waiting area to another, my then-partner, now-wife was eventually summoned to a narrow pin-board cubicle for her travel vaccinations but returned with fewer band-aids than expected.

“I have to get a pregnancy test before the measles vaccine,” she said quietly, entering a deep, still pool of silence. We knew something unspoken was about to become undeniable.

We reached out to find each other’s hand, staring ahead. The idea of this new destination was yet too big to discuss.

She was supposed to be on her way to Gaza, for a nine-month nursing assignment with Medecins Sans Frontieres — Doctors Without Borders. The induction training and paperwork were complete, and the dates were scheduled. There were only small details, like the vaccines, to conclude. Why Gaza? They had urgent unmet needs.

Those plans came tumbling down under the uncertainty of gestation. I once read a report on maternal and fetal mortality that began: “Reproduction is hazardous for most species.”

“I can’t do anything about the genetics,” the obstetrician told her with a knowing look while gesturing toward me. He wasn’t joking. He reinforced the blame-shifting at each visit.

There were about a thousand ultrasounds, each with a heart-stopping pause to clarify some obscure uncertainty. “Scanxiety” they call it.

She still desperately wanted to go to those people in need, and I loved her all the more, but she also wanted to avoid burdening anyone if her own pregnancy played up.

Mothers don’t get a day off from worry. Women in Gaza, Israel, and Ukraine — even pregnant healthcare workers — are not spared anxiety by virtue of war, terrorism or quotidian tasks.

The vast pain of mothers who might lose, or have lost, their children is beyond anything the warring men of power can comprehend. Casualties, represented as numbers, are accepted by zealots and politicians, but for mothers, no child is a number, no cause is worth that sacrifice.

The Middle East has been famously uncertain for a very long time. If an idea seems too big to digest, does that mean we never talk about it? Ignoring it will not help.

The latest murderous attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7 were gratuitously horrific.

Respected Israeli intellectual and historian Yuval Harare warns that the blood-thirsty Hamas’ objective is escalating war. He says the fight must target the enmeshed terrorists, in order to aim for sustainable peace and to avoid widening the conflict on other borders.

For Israel’s response to be seen as reasonable by international observers they will need to explicitly spare Palestinian civilians and permit humanitarian aid to an efficacious degree.

There are reports that Israel is “not ruling out” bombing the large Al Shifa Hospital, which is reported to be sheltering 60,000 people. They say it is being used as cover by Hamas. Many healthcare workers and patients could become human-shield casualties.

That hospital, frequented by international aid workers, is a cruel metaphor for the entire looping history of trauma there. I hope they find a more precise way to excise the evil of Hamas terrorism and restore much-needed security to Israel’s population — a path that necessarily also fosters a sustainable, dignified future for desperate Palestinians.

Mothers will not be put in charge of the world any time soon. I wish they were. There would perhaps be more peace if everything were thoroughly imbued with the wisdom, caution and generosity of maternal instinct.