In an almost fair and balanced article, The New York Times delves into the issue of legal certificates for stillborn babies.
The liberal rag actually acknowledges, in a rather sympathetic manner no less, that it's understandable why a certificate of stillbirth is not acceptable to grieving parents. It's not enough.
It's very important to some parents to have their child's life acknowledged with a birth certificate.
Of course, the Culture of Death squad wants no part of that.
Last summer, three weeks before her due date, Sari Edber delivered a stillborn son, Jacob. “He was 5 pounds and 19 inches, absolutely beautiful, with my olive complexion, my husband’s curly hair, long fingers and toes, chubby cheeks and a perfect button nose,” she said.
The sudden shift from what she called “a perfectly wonderful healthy pregnancy” to delivering a dead infant was unfathomably painful, said Ms. Edber, 27, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Daniel.
“The experience of giving birth and death at the exact same time is something you don’t understand unless you’ve gone through it,” Ms. Edber said. “The day before I was released from the hospital, the doctor came in with the paperwork for a fetal death certificate, and said, ‘I’m sorry, but this is the only document you’ll receive.’ In my heart, it didn’t make sense. I was in labor. I pushed, I had stitches, my breast milk came in, just like any other mother. And we deserved more than a death certificate.”
So Ms. Edber joined with others who had experienced stillbirth to push California legislators to pass a bill allowing parents to receive a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth.
In the last six years, 19 states, including New Jersey, have enacted laws allowing parents who have had stillbirths to get such certificates. Similar legislation is under consideration in several more, among them New York. More than 25,000 pregnancies a year end in stillbirth, generally defined as a naturally occurring, unintentional intrauterine death after more than 20 weeks of gestation. A cause for the death is usually not determined.
To thousands of parents who have experienced stillbirth, getting a birth certificate is passionately important, albeit symbolic.
And was does that birth certificate symbolize?
Life -- a record of a real life that was lost.
That, of course, is threatening to people invested in dehumanizing life.
“It’s dignity and validation,” said Joanne Cacciatore, an Arizona woman who started the movement after her daughter, Cheyenne, was stillborn 13 years ago. “It’s the same reason why we want things like marriage licenses and baptismal certificates.”
But politically, the birth-certificate laws, often referred to as “Missing Angels” bills, occupy uncertain territory, skirting the abortion debate while implicitly raising the question of fetal personhood.
What is wrong with these pro-abortion people?
Sari Edber was three weeks away from her due date when her son Jacob was delivered stillborn.
Is there really a question of fetal personhood at that point in a pregnancy?
I don't understand how the pro-abortion proponents can be so extreme that they refuse to admit that Jacob was a unique human being, a person.
...Many antiabortion groups say the laws fill a need for parents. But some abortion rights supporters see the push for these laws as a barely disguised political move to undermine abortion rights.
In some states, local chapters of abortion rights groups have opposed the legislation. But at the national level, some abortion rights groups are comfortable with the laws, if they are drafted carefully to cover naturally occurring fetal death and not late-term abortion.
“At a level of great abstraction, there are probably some people who worry that recognizing a nonviable fetus as a person would in some way be a seed that could sprout into a threat to abortion,” said Roger Evans, a lawyer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “But I don’t think we see it that way. We recognize the tragedy and loss of stillbirth, and as long as these laws are medically accurate, and the certificates are optional and commemorative, they’re a way to recognize that loss.”
This is a tough one for Planned Parenthood.
The organization would seem utterly callous and detached from reality if it were to take the position that having a stillborn baby is no big deal. It has to show some compassion for women suffering through that incredibly difficult loss.
On the flip side however, it has to distinguish between late-term abortion and naturally occurring death.
If the stillborn child is a person, then the late-term aborted (murdered) child is also a person.
How lame that an "optional and commemorative" certificate is acceptable to them, but a "certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth" crosses the line!
It's a word game.
It's no more than a smokescreen thrown up purposely to avoid admitting the reality that an unborn child, a stillborn child, and an aborted child are all human beings.
...Prodded by Ms. Cacciatore, Arizona was the first state to provide birth certificates for stillbirth. Ms. Cacciatore also founded the M.I.S.S. Foundation, a nonprofit group that coordinates the campaign for these certificates and also advocates for increased research to help prevent stillbirth and infant death.
“I thought about suicide every day after Cheyenne’s birth,” Ms. Cacciatore said. “I loved this baby; I went through all the physical pain of delivering her. I had her baby book prepared, with the place for her birth certificate.”
When the state office of vital records mailed a death certificate instead, she said, “I literally dropped it.” She added, “When I called and asked for my daughter’s birth certificate, the woman asked how she died, and when I told her, she said I didn’t have a baby, I had a fetus, and I couldn’t get a birth certificate.”
It's ridiculous that Arizona's office of vital records would issue a death certificate but refuse to provide a birth certificate.
One can't die unless one is alive.
Cacciatore didn't deliver a fetus. She had a baby.
...Yet, the concept of birth certificates for stillbirth raises complicated questions. In heated Web discussions, some people cite the parents’ deep need for validation while others say birth certificates are legal documents, not memory trinkets or prizes for enduring birthing.
“Any way that acknowledges the child is important,” said Catherine Shandler, of Montclair, N.J., who lost her daughter, Emma, three years ago, two weeks before the due date. Emma remains part of the family, Ms. Shandler said, a presence she will someday discuss with her son, Benjamin, 20 months old, and a daughter, India, born Saturday.
It is often hard to know what to say, she said.
“When you say you had a stillbirth, some people can’t wrap their head around the fact that there was a baby,” said Ms. Shandler, who said she supports abortion rights. When people ask if she has children, she said, sometimes she mentions Emma, and sometimes she does not. But, she added, “I want to acknowledge that Emma existed.”
Interesting that Shandler supports abortion rights.
I don't know how she manages that balancing act. I can't believe that she supports late-term abortion.
I can't believe that she supports abortion on demand at anytime during pregnancy. That would run completely counter to her efforts.
She refers to "the fact that there was a baby."
YES. That's a fact. There was a baby. Tragically, her precious baby was dead.
She says, "I want to acknowledge that Emma existed."
Again, there can't be death without life.
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Wisconsin is one of nineteen states with a law, (SB 399), that acknowledges the baby's existence.
Under the bill, if a birth results in a stillbirth for which a fetal death report is required, the person who is responsible for preparing and filing the fetal death report must inform the parent or parents of the option to have a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth prepared and of how to obtain a certified copy of the certificate. If the parent or parents wish to have a certificate prepared, the person responsible for preparing and filing the fetal death report must, within five days after the delivery of the stillbirth, prepare a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth and file it with the state registrar. Only a parent of the stillbirth may obtain a certified copy of the certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth by requesting a copy from the state registrar in writing and paying a fee of $10.
I can't imagine people getting bent out of of shape about a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth.
It's cruel.
How sad that they're so invested in the Culture of Death that they wish to deny parents the comfort of having the personhood of their stillborn child recognized.
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