Bereaved parents seek birth certificates for stillborns
By ILENE LELCHUK
Scripps News Service
Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Cherie Golant has three photos of her daughter Julia at birth. She has a lock of Julia's newborn hair, thick and dark. She has Julia's handprints, footprints and hospital wristbands.

She also has memories of 30 hours of grueling labor _ but no official record of Julia's birth.

Julia was stillborn, with her umbilical cord around her neck. The state issued only a death certificate.

"I remember my discharge nurse said to me, 'You are still a mom. Don't forget that,' " said Golant of San Francisco. "It was amazing to me how important those words were in the days and weeks after my daughter died. But there was no official evidence I was a mom. I had the milk in my breasts and the potbelly of a postpartum mom, but I didn't have a birth certificate."

It is more than a piece of paper to many of the nearly 3,000 families that cope with stillbirth each year in California. They are anxiously watching the progress of state legislation that would authorize the state to issue a "certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth." It is headed to the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday for its first in a long line of hearings.

The bill's path is not likely to be smooth, even though similar legislation already has passed in 18 states and is pending in seven others.

The national discussion about birth certificates for stillborns, which are being pushed by bereaved parents working with the Missing Angels Foundation, has been mingled with the abortion debate. Pro-choice advocates have opposed the laws on the grounds that they could fuel the anti-abortion cause by acknowledging that an unborn fetus is a person.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, vetoed a similar bill Friday. In his veto memo, he said it would create redundant documents _ a death certificate and a certificate of stillbirth _ that could lead to confusion and fraud. But the bill's author, Republican state Sen. Lee Rawson, said the pro-choice governor didn't sign the law because he believed it would bolster the anti-abortion campaign.

In California, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists state chapter are concerned about just that with the sstate legislation.

"We are absolutely sympathetic" with the families, said Planned Parenthood Vice President Yali Bair. "However, any time we deal with any legislation, we have to think big and think about unintended consequences."

At issue is how stillbirth is defined.

"It is important that elective terminations are not included in that definition," Bair said.

A pending bill in New York, for example, uses the words "naturally occurring intrauterine death" so it does not apply to abortion.

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, said his bill doesn't need to spell out that abortions are excluded because it states clearly that the new certificates are for stillbirths only. And, medically speaking, health officials across the nation consider a stillborn any fetus born dead after 20 or more gestational weeks.

Maldonado, who is the second state legislator to propose such a bill, said he didn't intend to politicize stillbirth. He is sponsoring the bill at the requests of women who lobbied his and other lawmakers' offices. He said he only recently learned how common stillbirths are _ much more common than sudden infant death syndrome, known as SIDS.

"I believe in my heart it's a simple piece of legislation," Maldonado said.

Roughly 25,600 stillbirths occurred nationally in 2003, compared with about 2,500 SIDS cases, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. There were 6.2 stillbirths per 1,000 births, a rate that has declined about fourfold since 1942, according to the agency.

All states issue a death certificate for a stillbirth and require the family to bury or cremate the body. In states that don't issue birth certificates, some hospitals offer commemorative certificates.

"How in the world do states ethically justify telling someone they have to bury someone who they are not willing to say existed?" asked Joanne Cacciatore, who ran the first campaign for birth certificates in her state of Arizona in 2001 and heads the Missing Angels Foundation. Her daughter Cheyenne died in 1994 during labor. Cacciatore said she thought about suicide every day for a year afterward.

"No one has been talking about this, and frankly I got tired of it," she said. "Seventy percent of women seriously consider ending their lives after stillbirths. This needs serious compassion and attention."

(E-mail Ilene Lelchuk at ilelchuk(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
 

Last Updated 04/15/2007     Design donated by Web-Writer