A Gift From God

The God who disapproves of abortion and stem cell research has given us another example of his celestial sense of humour with this little jest. An Indian girl has been born with two skulls joined together in her head, resulting in two pairs of eyes, two noses and two sets of lips. In a society with modern pre-natal care, presumably such a defect would have been detected early, the parents informed that media freak shows are generally too short-lived to be a viable proposition, and the pregnancy aborted, to the pious horror of Christendom. Thirty-five miles from Delhi, visitors are queueing at the door to venerate the girl as a "gift from God", which is doubtless the Third World equivalent of the paparazzi camping outside while editors compose screaming headlines about the dangers of teenage motherhood and Christendom mumbles about the need for other people to bear their crosses with fortitude. "She feeds through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other," said the father. "She's just a baby"; which may be why the family is constructing a temple to her.