Mr. Gerry Edwards:

I will take this question. We delivered our son in Belfast, which was just a car journey up the road, and we were afraid to bring him home. We did not know how to bring a dead baby across the Border and what do we do when we get home. Nobody could tell us what to do. Nobody could counsel us on that. Neither my wife nor I ever got counselling of any description. As I explained earlier, he was cremated without us being there and we got his ashes from a courier. We still have them at home. I did not realise it at the time, but I certainly came to realise over the passing years, that the lack of a funeral had affected me greatly. It caused me an awful lot of hurt. I was on antidepressants for ten years and I did not really know why until I went and got better help myself. One day, we were expecting and we had the dreams and then we had nothing. We had no place to go. We had no grave. All of our friends knew we were expecting a baby and then there was nothing. There was no closure. My parents never met their grandson. My sisters and Gaye's father never met him. Gaye's mother travelled with us. She is the only other person who saw him and met him. If we had been able to deliver him here, all of our families could have got to see him. It would have made him more real for all of us, and not just this spot of bother we had or something. He is still our son. The whole ability to have a funeral, and have that social right, is really important. This is why more and more people are going to the extremes they are going to try to ensure that they can bring their baby home, because they need that closure.

I mentioned earlier about people being anxious about approaching their priests. Unfortunately, having a severe or fatal foetal abnormality is quite indiscriminate and does not recognise whether someone is religious or not or has money or not, or anything like that. A number of people we have supported have told us about going to their priests and the nuns in their parishes, and every one of them has said they were treated wonderfully. It is important to point this out because sometimes this is played out as being something that it is not, in terms of being religious or non-religious. For those who have religion and for whom having a religious right is important, our experience anecdotally has been the priests and nuns in the parish and community, the ones who will sit at someone's kitchen table having a cup of tea while someone is crying, understand it and they get it. They approach it from a ministry of love, compassion and healing. Some of the hierarchy have a bit more of a judgment and condemnation thing going on, and this is unfortunate because it scares people away from approaching their local clergy because they have that fear. I do not think this helps anybody. Life is tragic enough. Sometimes people need psychological help and sometimes they need spiritual help. Those doors should be open to them. Having proper closure and not being treated as an outcast is crucial for their well-being.