children. One of the first was a wealthy Hindu woman who sponsored 10
children for 10 years.
In time, other donors would do the same. This
practice helped the chil-
dren to receive the education or technical skills they needed to become
self-supporting. It was common, for instance, for an Indian donor to pay
tuition for an infant from birth to the end of the child’s school years. Over
the years, the circle of donors widened considerably, as donors throughout
the world sponsored children at the Shishu Bhavans. The support monies
donated for the children were placed in a bank account until the child
reached school age; the funds were then used to pay for the child’s edu-
cation. This system proved so successful that in 1975 Mother Teresa
organized the World Child Welfare Fund, which shared the financial as-
sistance among all of the children under the
care of the Missionaries of
Charity.
THE PROMISE OF A NEW LIFE
For residents of Shishu Bhavan who were of marrying age, Mother
Teresa, in accordance with Hindu custom, helped arrange marriages. Act-
ing as a marriage broker, Mother Teresa worked with other Hindu families
seeking a bride for a male relative. While the social status of the girls who
lived at Shishu Bhavan was, in general, low, Mother Teresa made sure that
each young woman had a dowry, or gifts, to
present to the prospective
bridegroom’s family. These dowries always included a new sari, a few trin-
kets, and a wedding ring. Local benefactors also helped in many instances
adding to the dowry some gold ornaments, household utensils, furniture,
and in many cases, money in a small bank account opened in the future
bride’s name. On any given day, the couples could be found gathering out-
side the Motherhouse to greet Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of
Charity. In time, a joke started to make the rounds that a prospective
bridegroom had better watch his step as he was inheriting not one
mother-in-law, but several.
Perhaps the most important program that
Mother Teresa created for
the children’s homes were adoptions. When the program began, the ma-
jority of children were placed with Christian families. Slowly, many
Hindu middle-class families opened their homes to unwanted and aban-
doned children. Initially, boys were still preferred over girls, but, over
time, many Hindu families were happy to welcome a new child, regardless
of sex, into their homes. Soon, Mother Teresa began to find homes for In-
dian children with overseas adoptive parents from Europe and North
America. However, the majority of families wishing to adopt wanted only
8 2
M O T H E R T E R E S A
healthy children. Though physically disabled children might find a home
with
European families, children with severe mental disabilities stayed at
the Shishu Bhavan.
In emphasizing adoption, Mother Teresa was also battling abortion,
which she strongly opposed. She once wrote that with abortion:
the mother kills even her own child to solve her problems.
And, by abortion, the father is told he does not have to take
any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the
world. That father is likely to put other women into the same
trouble. So abortion leads to abortion. Any country that ac-
cepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use vio-
lence to get what they want.
2
For Mother Teresa, adoption was the best way to combat not only abor-
tion, but the growing practice of sterilizing women to cut down on esca-
lating birth rates. The Indian government advocated
female sterilization
as a way to combat population growth. To combat abortion clinics,
Mother Teresa and her sisters sent word to medical clinics, hospitals, and
police stations that the Missionaries of Charity would accept all un-
wanted children.
In addition to adoption, Mother Teresa also became involved in family
planning. The Missionaries began instruction in what Mother Teresa
called Holy Family Planning, which emphasized natural family planning
based on the rhythm method, the only family-planning practice sanc-
tioned by the Roman Catholic Church. The Missionaries also set up a
number of family-planning centers where young
married couples not only
learned how the rhythm method worked, but also learned that abstaining
from sex was another way to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Despite the
simplicity of these methods, teaching them to the poor had its drawbacks.
One familiar story involved a woman who had already given birth to a
large number of children. Wishing to avoid another pregnancy, she re-
ceived instruction in the rhythm method and was given a string of beads
of various colors to help her keep track of her ovulation. Several months
later, she returned to one of the family planning centers, obviously preg-
nant. She told the sisters that she had hung the beads around a statue of
Kali, and forgot about them. Then, she could
not understand why she be-
came pregnant.
As they had with her practices at Nirmal Hriday, detractors criticized
Mother Teresa’s stance on abortion and sterilization. Many argued that
there were too many unwanted children in India and that there was no
S H I S H U B H AVA N A N D S H A N T I N A G A R
8 3
way that the Missionaries of Charity could possibly care for every single
one. Although abortion clinics were available, they were rare and costly,
hardly justifying Mother Teresa’s outrage. Outlawing abortions might
cause women to try to abort their unborn child themselves, often with ter-
rible and fatal results. In the face of such criticism,
Mother Teresa stood
her ground and never veered away from the Church’s teachings on birth
control and abortion. But the controversy was far from over; in the years
to come, Mother Teresa would be a visible target for pro-choice advocates
the world over.
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