Bill To Issue Certificates For Stillborns Complicated By Abortion Debate

 

TRENTON, N.J. -- A bill that would allow parents to be issued a birth certificate for a stillborn child is under consideration in the state Legislature.

As in other states where such measures have been introduced, abortion has been drawn into the debate over the New Jersey bill.

Parents of stillborn children have complained that while state law requires the babies to be buried, there are no official records that the infants were ever born.

"This is one of those small changes that the Legislature and the governor can do that can make people's lives a little better," bill sponsor Sen. Thomas H. Kean Jr., R-Union, told The Record of Bergen County for Thursday's editions.

Jennie and John Faith are among the parents pushing for the change. They were angered after their daughter, Clare, was stillborn and they found out that no official document of that event would be issued.

"I said to myself, `This isn't right,"' Jennie Faith said. "The state is acknowledging that she died but not that she was born."

There were 804 stillbirths in New Jersey in 2001, the last year for which complete statistics are available, according to the state health department. Up to 39,000 stillbirths take place in the United States each year.

Ten states have laws that require certificates to be issued for stillbirths, according to the Mothers in Sympathy and Support Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group. Another 13 states, including New Jersey, have bills on the matter pending.

In two states, the issue has become caught up in abortion politics. In California a bill was withdrawn after the National Organization for Women and a gynecologists' group spoke out against it. They claimed stillbirth records could lead to the requirement that late-term abortions be reported, which would be an invasion of privacy.

New Jersey groups on both sides of the abortion debate said they have not taken a position on the bill.

The bill was held up in the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee after some members questioned the language. The head of the committee then added language that would require the certificates to apply only to "unintended" fetal deaths so that they aren't issued for aborted fetuses. That amendment has not been adopted by the committee.