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Stillbirth Certificates Welcome

Staff Reporters of Minneapolis Star Tribune
April 26, 2005

Eighteen years have passed, but the mother still remembers the moment. One of the people who had taken away the lifeless body of her newborn child was back with a clipboard and pen, asking for a signature on a fetal death report. Her child would be recorded only as having died, not as having been born. She wanted to scream in protest at the blunt force of the words on the state-ordered page.

Eighteen months have passed since Karen and William Klinzing lost an infant son at age four weeks to a birth defect. They experienced an ordeal much like a stillbirth, and heard from other grieving parents about the pain they felt when only a death certificate, not a birth certificate, was thrust into their hands.

So Rep. Karen Klinzing, R-Woodbury, set out to offer those parents the option of filing a "record of birth resulting in stillbirth" in addition to the death form. Her bill to that effect cleared the House with a 134-0 vote last week. Its Senate counterpart, sponsored by Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, should get the same resounding sendoff to the governor's desk.

Giving parents a chance to record the birth of a child who never blinked or breathed may seem a small thing. It offers only a thimbleful of solace. But the mother who still remembers, 18 years later, wishes she could have left in state annals a fuller trace of the one she loved and lost. A compassionate state would not deny parents that opportunity.