Customer Reviews

For the Love of Angela

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Was required to read this book for a moral theology class and I am grateful to have done so. The book is a profound eye-opening experience about what a mother (and entire family) experiences when a child in utero is diagnosed with a genetic problem that is "incompatible with life". The issue of losing a child - through miscarriage, stillbirth, soon after birth or SIDS - is one that happens frequently but with little attention paid to the grieving of the family who have suddenly had a member pass.

This book is a must-read for anyone of the clerical state or involved in family counseling.

In the Introduction to her book Nancy Mayer-Whittington notes that "As Angela was God's gift to me, this book is my gift to you." I consider For the Love of Angela to be a wonderful gift, and I am grateful for the author's courage in writing it. It is most of all a book about love for her baby, Angela, and it brought to mind the words of Thomas Merton in Life and Holiness that "He who in actual fact loves more perfectly will be closer to God,...."

Reading this book is heartbreaking at times, but is an encounter with unselfish and unconditional love for an unborn child who had serious problems, and the parents trying to give their baby as many chances as they could. I am sure this love exists in all parents who are continuing their pregnancy after a severe or fatal diagnosis for their baby, just as it does in the author and her husband, Bryan.

Every life has value, purpose, and meaning. Baby Angela lived inside the womb until birth and outside of the womb for only ten minutes, but she still lives in many hearts and minds and she enriched many lives. This wonderful book is baby Angela's contribution, too.

Excellent story of a mother's love for her disabled child, both when she was unborn and when she was born, despite great pressure from doctors to abort her.

Increasing numbers of parents of disabled children come under pressure to abort. This book is worth reading by parents struggling to let their unborn children live, and by all who care about the most vulnerable of human beings.