State lawmakers weigh recognition of stillborn births
May 21, 2006

By CARA MATTHEWS

ALBANY -- Some parents of stillborn babies and their advocates are urging state lawmakers to require the state Health Department to issue birth certificates for their children -- a step they say could help ease the pain of losing their babies.

But a measure to do just that is stalled in the Legislature, with some claiming that it could be the first step in making abortions more difficult to obtain.

One woman in 115 delivers her baby at a hospital and leaves empty-handed because the child died before the birth, according to the National Stillbirth Society.

Some institutions, such as Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, may give them a memory box, an angel teddy bear and photos of the parents with their little boy or girl. But as far as an official certificate documenting a stillbirth, nothing is forthcoming in New York.

That one sheet of paper could be considered trivial to some, but not to people like Beth Maier of Highland, Ulster County, who gave birth to a 6-pound, 14-ounce girl April 8, 2005. Baby Elizabeth had died more than a day before the delivery, due to an umbilical cord accident.

"I think it should be acknowledged," said Maier, 32. "This is the hardest thing I've ever gone through. I've lost my daughter ... and it just kills me that the state won't acknowledge that she existed."

Maier and her husband, 34-year-old Robert Maier, support proposed legislation in New York that would change that. A growing number of states, at the urging of parents of stillborn babies, allow families to request special certificates of birth that note the baby was stillborn.

This helps parents with the grieving process and gives states a more accurate picture of the number of stillbirths, said Joanne Cacciatore, an Arizona woman whose baby was stillborn in 1994. Cacciatore founded the M.I.S.S. Foundation, which stands for Mothers In Sympathy and Support.

The group has a nationwide campaign for stillbirth certificates. Twelve states now offer certificates of birth resulting in stillbirth. Ten have what the foundation considers the less preferable certificates of stillbirth.

The National Stillbirth Society, which works with the M.I.S.S. Foundation, says more than 2,000 of the 26,000 stillbirths that occur nationwide each year are in New York. More than 60 percent of stillbirths occur for unknown medical reasons, the group says.

In New York, the Missing Angels legislation is pending in the Senate and is stuck in committee in the Assembly.

Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, has concerns with moving the bill forward, a spokesman said.

"For the government to certify that a baby was born, when that did not happen, sadly does not change the tragedy of a stillbirth," Gottfried said. "A certificate from the government should be accurate."

Under the bill, families would be able to name the child. The certificate would say "naturally occurring intrauterine death," which would distinguish the stillbirth from abortion.

Mothers of stillborn children know they had a child, said Elizabeth Noselli of Haverstraw, Rockland County, whose baby boy died at 38 weeks into the pregnancy in 2001.

"That piece of paper, for some reason, would make it seem like they existed to everybody else," said Noselli, 33, who has since had three children.

Ann Critelli, the perinatal bereavement coordinator at Vassar Brothers, said she doesn't know of a family that wouldn't want the special certificate. Critelli had a stillborn daughter 17 years ago.

"For any bereaved parent, a baby's a baby, no matter how small. That baby touches your life and you just want validation," said Critelli, a registered nurse.

The abortion issue has surfaced in a number of states that have considered Missing Angels acts. Some groups believe the legislation embarks on a slippery slope about when life begins and when a fetus is a person. In California, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said the additional information required by the bill wouldn't serve any medical or scientific purpose.

The organization said in an April 2002 letter that the bill would be a "backdoor way of requiring the reporting of elective termination of pregnancies over 20 weeks" and was "designed to discourage women from receiving abortion services."

Donna Williams, ACOG's executive director in New York, said her organization didn't have any comment.

In states that have Missing Angels Acts, abortion is not threatened, said Cacciatore and Richard Olsen, who heads the National Stillbirth Society.

The Stillbirth Society does not have an anti-abortion agenda, said Olsen, who may travel to New York to speak with Goffried. The certificates are issued only for deliveries following naturally occurring fetal deaths, his group said.

"Birth is a process that all mothers endure. Live or still is the outcome of that process," said Olsen, who had a stillborn daughter six years ago.

The legislation has nothing to do with abortion, said Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, R-Blooming Grove, Orange County, the bill's sponsor in her house.

"It gives them a certificate that allows them at this time of loss to name their child," she said.

Vivian Nania of Newburgh said she woke up July 7, 2004, three days past her due date, and knew something was wrong. She had a perfect pregnancy, but her daughter, Angel Marie, was stillborn at Vassar Brothers.

Nania, 34, said there's a difference between someone who miscarries early on and someone who has a stillbirth at full term, and she and others are asking for special consideration. Currently, parents receive certificates of fetal death.

"I'll always know she existed, there's no doubt but it would just make it ... her acknowledgement from a state level or a country level, it would make her feel more real," said Nania, who has two boys, 10 months and 5 years.

In Highland, as the Maiers lobby for the Missing Angels Act, they are awaiting the birth of another child this summer. The couple, both high school teachers, have a son, 3, who knows there was once a baby Elizabeth and she's the reason for the angel teddy bear.

Beth Maier said she has learned to accept that the stillbirth was "an act of God" and she shouldn't punish herself for it.

"That loss will live with me and I'll visit the cemetery for the rest of my life, and I will always have a child who's in heaven," she said.

 

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