Crime or tragedy? Murder & suicide at Villanova

Commonweal, March 25, 2005 by Cathleen Kaveny

On January 20, 2005, Villanova University dedicated a memorial to the late Professor Mine Ener, director of the university's Center for Arab and Islamic Studies. The last six months of Mine's life, and the circumstances of her death, had shaken the campus. The year after she was married, Mine gave birth to a daughter, Raya Donagi, who suffered from Down syndrome and associated medical complications. As time went on, Raya's condition did not improve and Mine sank more deeply into postpartum depression. By the time Raya was six months old, Mine appeared to be gripped by postpartum psychosis. On the morning of August 4, 2003, she killed Raya, later telling police that she could not bear for the baby to continue in such suffering. A few weeks later, Mine Ener took her own life.

Shocked and heartbroken, the Villanova community nonetheless refused to reduce the meaning of Mine's life to the despair, psychosis, and violence that plagued her last days. After much thought, a committee decided to create a small oasis in the library that reflected Mine's love of Middle Eastern hospitality and culture. A plaque on the wall read, "In memory of Mine Ener: scholar, teacher, mentor, friend." It also noted her dates of service at Villanova (1996-2003).

The memorial was a grieving community's act of hope, and its prayer for some peace. It was not a political act. Yet it was immediately brandished as a weapon in the culture wars. A few prolife students protested that the memorial was inconsistent with church teaching on the sanctity of life. Television personality Bill O'Reilly castigated the university for "honoring" a baby killer, as did members of the blogosphere. Villanova quickly capitulated to the pressure, announcing on January 31 that the plaque would be removed, and that Mine would be memorialized by a symposium on postpartum depression and psychosis.

What, exactly, is going on here? On one level, the controversy seems unwarranted. First, according to traditional Catholic teaching, it is highly unlikely that Mine Ener was morally culpable for killing either her baby or herself. Despite her best efforts to seek treatment, her postpartum psychosis deprived Mine of the minimum conditions of reason and free will necessary for someone to be morally responsible for such acts. Morally speaking, she was not a "killer." Second, the plaque created little danger of "scandal"--traditionally understood to mean fostering the misapprehension that a morally illicit act is permissible. Unlike abortion, infanticide is not only illegal, it is vigorously prosecuted. There was absolutely no suggestion that baby Raya's Down syndrome meant that her life was counted less seriously by the relevant authorities. Third, the memorial was clearly designed not to "honor" Mine's tragic acts but to remind people of the overall meaning of her life.

Why, then, the firestorm? On a deeper level, I think it goes back to abortion--but not in the way articulated by those protesting the memorial. Everyone must sense, at least on an inchoate level, that Mine Ener's story makes a perfect advertisement for Planned Parenthood: A successful, newly married thirty-seven-year-old professional woman refuses to heed standard medical warnings to have amniocentesis and gives birth to a baby with Down syndrome. She is determined to give her baby the best possible life, but she can't. Because of her baby's illness, and her own, the story ends catastrophically. If Mine had simply had an abortion, she might have had another baby, a "normal" child, whose demands would not have pushed Mine's fragile psyche beyond endurance.

So how might prolifers counter this cautionary tale? There are three possible strategies. First, blame Mine for the tragedy, and treat her as if she were morally responsible for killing her baby and herself. That is the strategy of those who denounce her as a moral monster. But what if you realize that she is also a victim, trapped by her own careening hormones and destabilized psyche? The second strategy is to treat the case as a freakish outlier. This is the approach of those who don't want to consign Mine to hell, but who don't want to "honor" her either. They want to make her disappear, so people won't think about her plight too much. The trouble with this approach is that it perpetuates an illusion. We might like to think that things in this life always work out for the best if we try to do the right thing, but sometimes they don't.

The final approach is the only one that will work in the long run. As Catholics, we proclaim the hope of redemption, not just from sin, but from sorrow and death. We recognize, with St. Paul, that "the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now" (Rom 8:22); we certainly see it in this case. The biological process of giving life to Raya and caring for her cost Mine her psyche, which in turn brought death to both mother and child. Giving life should never mean causing death. In such cases, Paul tells us, "the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26). But the heart and soul of Catholic faith is a firm hope for redemption, even in the midst of grinding sorrow. It is hope without blinkers. Easter Sunday does not erase Good Friday--it transfigures it.