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Summary
- Hannah’s vow at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:10–11) is the best-known prayer for a child in the Bible; Rebekah, Rachel, Sarah and Elisabeth also conceived after long waiting.
- The 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s marriage service asks God to bestow “if it be thy will, the gift and heritage of children”; the Orthodox hymn for Mary’s Nativity recalls Joachim and Anna “delivered from the reproach of childlessness.”
- Short prayers cover starting to try, a negative test, a clinic visit, the marriage, a friend’s pregnancy, the husband, a miscarriage, adoption, an answer of no, and a positive test.
- Catholics ask the prayers of Saint Anne, Gerard Majella and Padre Pio; Anne’s story comes from the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, and Gerard’s patronage of mothers is popular devotion.
- The Catholic Catechism calls IVF and artificial insemination “morally unacceptable” (paragraphs 2376–2377); other churches take different positions.
- The NHS advises seeing a doctor after a year of trying, and sooner for women aged 36 and over.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 21:1–2; 25:21; 30:1, 22; 1 Samuel 1:10–11, 17–18, 20, 27; Psalm 30:5; 34:18; 56:8; 127:3; 139:13; Luke 1:13; Romans 12:15; Ephesians 1:5). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. The Solemnization of Matrimony, “O Almighty God, Creator of mankind,” p. 303. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Nativity of the Most Holy Birth-giver of God, Collect-Hymn (Kontakion), pp. 165–166. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraphs 2374–2379. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P86.HTM
- Holweck, Frederick. “St. Anne.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01538a.htm
- Magnier, John. “St. Gerard Majella.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06467c.htm
- “Hope in the Handkerchief of a Saint.” EWTN Library. https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/hope-in-the-handkerchief-of-a-saint-5537
- Holy See. “Padre Pio da Pietrelcina (1887–1968),” biography for the canonization of 16 June 2002. https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20020616_padre-pio_en.html
- NHS. “Infertility.” https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/infertility/
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