Q. If a child dies during childbirth or is lost in miscarriage will that child go to heaven?
A.  Jesus prescribed what we are to do in John 3:5 when he said, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”

That is the Lord’s precept for the ordinary circumstances of human life. It is as if you tell a person, look both ways before you cross the street.

Now, technically, when you go out and cross to your own garage to get the lawnmower and you cross your own driveway, you don’t have to look both ways. But we don’t say look both ways except when you cross your own driveway.

When you are crossing an alley that doesn’t give onto the street or when you are crossing the street that is closed, we say simply look both ways.
Jesus says get baptized.

What happens to the infant who dies in the womb? Well, can we suppose that the Lord, who said in the Gospel of Matthew (19:14), “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” would deny that child eternal happiness?

I doubt it.

Can I say that is the teaching of the Church?

No, because Jesus didn’t give us directions on all those cases, just as we don’t get the absolute specifics when we are taught, “Look both ways.”

But we hope in Jesus and we know what he wanted and he is God and God is kind. God is faithful. God is all-loving and the source of eternal life.

Our catechism also teaches that God is tender (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1261).

A tender God would not condemn his beloved little ones to an unjust punishment.

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