ROME, January 26, 2005 - The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, wrote on Tuesday that a woman who refused cancer treatment to save the life of her unborn child is a "hero."
"She was aware that if she gave birth she wouldn't have had any hope of surviving," the Vatican paper wrote. "Despite that she went through with her choice, the choice of welcoming new life even at the cost of her own death."
Rita Fedrizzi 41, who refused the abortion and cancer treatment, joins the ranks of a number of other women praised by the Holy See for their lifegiving sacrifice. Last year, Pope John Paul II canonized Italian pediatrician, Gianna Molla, who died in 1962. Molla also refused to be treated for cancer and died days after giving birth to a daughter.
Fedrizzi died this week, three months after giving birth to a baby boy. "Rita's choice, which I always shared, was a choice of faith," her husband, Enrico Ferrari, told the Italian news agency ANSA. "Whenever someone recommended abortion as the only way to escape (death), she would say, "It's as if they're asking me to kill one of my other two children to save my skin," he said.
Is this not a logical implication of the belief that a human being is created at conception?