"How Can They Accept That?"

The dreadful thing about this is that it could happen anywhere in the world. We expect that in third-world countries where poverty is truly endemic and people live hand-to-mouth and medical treatment is rare, that a woman will deliver a baby unassisted by medical professionals and that baby will not survive.

Despite that birth is the most original of the most common experiences known to humankind. Twinned with death.

And in Paris, on a street in the city's 14th arrondissement, a short walk from Fort Royal St. Vincent de Paul maternity clinic and Cochin hospital, this is what occurred; life and death walked hand-in-hand, each assisting the other.

After most births there is a long lapse of time with many experiences in between as the subject grows into infancy, then the adolescent years and into maturity.

This unfortunate episode on a Paris street of an affluent district was life-and-death greatly accelerated. In one fell swoop, a new life brought into the world, and whoosh! summoned by death and speedily departed.

The baby's parents had scarce time to welcome their newborn before mourning its swift departure. They had set up their home, as a tent on Rue de l'Observatoire.

"When the contractions started, I saw her pushing, pushing and I received the baby's head, and as soon as its head and shoulders were through, it came out. But it was not moving. I gave it mouth to mouth for 10 minutes, then phoned the emergency services, but it was too late."

A baby girl, whose pre-selected name was Dolores-Christina. "We knocked on many doors, but were always referred to the 115 [a number for emergency social housing and help], but we found the doors closed practically everywhere. They accept single women or men, but not couples."

There is an estimated 130,000 homeless in France, with 280 people having met their Maker on the streets. It happens everywhere. It occurs in all countries of the world, inclusive of the wealthy, advanced countries for whom social services to the under-privileged and those whom ease and comfort has left behind is considered a priority.

Invariably, even the budgets set aside for the purpose of making life more bearable for the poverty-stricken, the health-impaired, the drug-addicted, the homeless, can be stretched so far, and no further. And governments everywhere, beset by economic downturns, have cut back on all manner of social services, including those for the desperately needy.

But the question that the father of the dead child asked rhetorically, painfully pointedly, is one that confronts and confounds us all: "How can citizens who pass by in the street every day and see from their windows a pregnant woman living in a tent, how can they accept that?"