Does God will the salvation of all features?

[Jack3]

God gives everyone sufficient grace to be saved
Many, many people die during gestation
Baptism is necessary for salvation

How to reconcile the above?

[anawim]

We reconcile it through God's mercy.
If we would be merciful and take their untimely death into consideration, think how much more God would do the same and more. He can't be out done by generosity.

[VeryTas]

Scripturally the strongest supports for the necessity of baptism for salvation might be Mark 16:16 (whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned) and John 3:3,5 (no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above ... no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit). But in context these don't necessarily apply to people who have not heard the gospel (so as to be able to believe) or to the preborn (how can they be born "again" [John 3:4] if they haven't even been born?).

[Stella]

I had first hand experience of this when my first child was stillborn in 1989. My uncle who is/was a very holy Priest (he is 91 and has dementia now), assured me that the Sacraments are for the living and that my child is in heaven.

As anawim wrote, it is through God's mercy that we can hold these truths in harmony.

[Jack3]

Oops. Typo. In the thread title, I meant salvation of all fetuses.

[Jack3]

We reconcile it through God's mercy.
If we would be merciful and take their untimely death into consideration, think how much more God would do the same and more. He can't be out done by generosity.

Once PED (stomachosus thomistarum?) had posted a quote saying those who die on original sin alone can't simply go to heaven.

[anawim]

We reconcile it through God's mercy.
If we would be merciful and take their untimely death into consideration, think how much more God would do the same and more. He can't be out done by generosity.

Once PED (stomachosus thomistarum?) had posted a quote saying those who die on original sin alone can't simply go to heaven.

The only people who can simply go to heaven are those who die between baptism and the age of reason. The rest of us have to be made clean. Some of us go through purgatory here on Earth, and some do so after death. Those who die before baptism, we leave to the mercy of God.
CCC 1261:

As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,"63 allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Pohle/Preuss on Grace:
Thesis III: The lot of unbaptized infants, though difficult to reconcile with the universality of God’s saving will, furnishes no argument against it.

Proof. The most difficult problem concerning the divine voluntas salvifica—a real crux theologorum—is the fate of unbaptized children. The Church has never uttered a dogmatic definition on this head, and theologians hold widely divergent opinions.

Bellarmine teaches that infants who die without being baptized, are excluded from the divine voluntas salvifica, because, while the non-reception of Baptism is the proximate reason of their damnation, its ultimate reason must be the will of God.

a) This rather incautious assertion needs to be carefully restricted. It is an article of faith that God has instituted the sacrament of Baptism as the ordinary means of salvation for all men. On the other hand, it is certain that He expects parents, priests, and relatives, as his representatives, to provide conscientiously for its proper and timely administration. Sinful negligence on the part of these responsible agents cannot, therefore, be charged to Divine Providence, but must be laid at the door of those human agents who fail to do their duty. In exceptional cases infants can be saved even by means of the so-called Baptism of blood (baptismus sanguinis), i.e. death for Christ’s sake. On the whole it may be said that God has, in principle, provided for the salvation of little children by the institution of infant Baptism.

b) But there are many cases in which either invincible ignorance or the order of nature precludes the administration of Baptism. The well-meant opinion of some theologians that the responsibility in all such cases lies not with God, but with men, lacks probability. Does God, then, really will the damnation of these innocents? Some modern writers hold that the physical order of nature is responsible for the misfortune of so many innocent infants; but this hypothesis contributes nothing towards clearing up the awful mystery. For God is the author of the natural as well as of the supernatural order. To say that He is obliged to remove existing obstacles by means of a miracle would disparage His ordinary providence. Klee’s assumption that dying children become conscious long enough to enable them to receive the Baptism of desire (baptismus flaminis), is scarcely compatible with the definition of the Council of Florence that “the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin, or only in original sin, forthwith descend to hell.” A still more unsatisfactory supposition is that the prayer of Christian parents acts like a baptism of desire and saves their children from hell. This theory, espoused by Cardinal Cajetan, was rejected by the Fathers of Trent, and Pope Pius V ordered it to be expunged from the Roman edition of Cajetan’s works.

A way out of the difficulty is suggested by Gutberlet and others, who, holding with St. Thomas that infants that die without Baptism will enjoy a kind of natural beatitude, think it possible that God, in view of their sufferings, may mercifully cleanse them from original sin and thereby place them in a state of innocence. This theory is based on the assumption that the ultimate fate of unbaptized children is deprivation of the beatific vision of God and therefore a state of real damnation (poena damni, infernum), and that the remission of original sin has for its object merely to enable these unfortunate infants to enjoy a perfect natural beatitude, which they could not otherwise attain. It is reasonable to argue that, as these infants are deprived of celestial happiness through no guilt of their own, the Creator can hardly deny them some sort of natural beatitude, to which their very nature seems to entitle them. “Hell” for them probably consists in being deprived of the beatific vision of God, which is a supernatural grace and as such lies outside the sphere of those prerogatives to which human nature has a claim by the fact of creation. This theory would seem to establish at least some manner of salvation for the infants in question, and consequently, to vindicate the divine voluntas salvifica in the same measure. Needless to say, it can claim no more than probability, and we find ourselves constrained to admit, at the conclusion of our survey, that there is no sure and perfect solution of the difficulty, and theologians therefore do well to confess their ignorance. [Note that this is the idea of Limbo.]

c) The difficulty of which we have spoken does not, of course, in any way impair the certainty of the dogma. The Scriptural passages cited above clearly prove that God wills to save all men without exception. In basing the universality of God’s mercy on His omnipotence, His universal dominion, and His love of souls, the Book of Wisdom evidently implies that the unbaptized infants participate in that mercy in all three of these respects. How indeed could Divine Omnipotence exert itself more effectively than by conferring grace on those who are inevitably and without any fault of their own deprived of Baptism? Who would deny that little children, as creatures, are subject to God’s universal dominion in precisely the same manner as adults? Again, if God loves the souls of men, must He not also love the souls of infants?

1Tim. II, 4 applies primarily to adults, because strictly speaking only adults can “come to the knowledge of the truth.” But St. Paul employs certain middle terms which undoubtedly comprise children as well. Thus, if all men have but “one God,” this God must be the God of infants no less than of adults, and His mercy and goodness must include them also. And if Jesus Christ as God-man is the “one mediator of God and men,” He must also have assumed the human nature of children, in order to redeem them from original sin. Again, if Christ “gave himself a redemption for all,” it is impossible to assume that millions of infants should be directly excluded from the benefits of the atonement.

[peregrinator]

Once PED (stomachosus thomistarum?) had posted a quote saying those who die on original sin alone can't simply go to heaven.

Correct, they cannot.

ETA: but this doesn't tell us anything much about whether all unbaptized infants die in Original Sin.