{"id":344,"date":"2007-12-14T08:24:34","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T08:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html"},"modified":"2007-12-14T08:24:34","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T08:24:34","slug":"the-road-of-bittersweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html","title":{"rendered":"The Road of Bittersweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The little boy <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iaBiu2ZRUO8\">featured in this video with his loving family\u00a0died 11 minutes after he was born<\/a>, last week. The parents had received a diagnosis of anencephaly earlier in the pregnancy,\u00a0were advised to abort, but made the decision to accept the &#8220;counsel and wisdom of the Church and bring him to full term&#8221; (from a letter accompanying the video). <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iaBiu2ZRUO8\">This video was played at his funeral. Beautiful and profoundly life-affirming. <\/a><br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.benotafraid.net\/\">Be Not Afraid is\u00a0a website\u00a0dedicated to supporting, in life-affirming ways,<\/a> parents and families who receive a poor or difficult prenatal diagnosis for their child. Take a look and keep it in mind &#8211; someone you know might need it someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The little boy featured in this video with his loving family\u00a0died 11 minutes after he was born, last week. The parents had received a diagnosis of anencephaly earlier in the pregnancy,\u00a0were advised to abort, but made the decision to accept the &#8220;counsel and wisdom of the Church and bring him to full term&#8221; (from a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Road of Bittersweet - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Road of Bittersweet - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The little boy featured in this video with his loving family\u00a0died 11 minutes after he was born, last week. The parents had received a diagnosis of anencephaly earlier in the pregnancy,\u00a0were advised to abort, but made the decision to accept the &#8220;counsel and wisdom of the Church and bring him to full term&#8221; (from a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-14T08:24:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Road of Bittersweet - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Road of Bittersweet - Via Media","og_description":"The little boy featured in this video with his loving family\u00a0died 11 minutes after he was born, last week. The parents had received a diagnosis of anencephaly earlier in the pregnancy,\u00a0were advised to abort, but made the decision to accept the &#8220;counsel and wisdom of the Church and bring him to full term&#8221; (from a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-12-14T08:24:34+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html","name":"The Road of Bittersweet - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-14T08:24:34+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-14T08:24:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/the-road-of-bittersweet.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Road of Bittersweet"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}