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 Senate Bill 850, which 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 MISS 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 SB850, sponsored by Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County), and Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana (Orange County).
"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."
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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 MISS 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."
Years ago, I heard Jean Garton, a founder of Lutherans for Life, well-known pro-life speaker and the author of an early and popular pro-life book, Who Broke the Baby?, speak at an NRLC convention. (The title of her book comes from an experience she had, reviewing slides of images of aborted babies when she thought her own son was asleep. He appeared, though, and that was his question to her.) The point of her talk was the moral and, to get down to it, intellectual dissonance that the abortion debate has planted in our psyches. When babies are babies when we want them and something else when we don’t, when things stop being simply what they are…you break, not only the baby, but the moral compass, shattering our ability to think rationally about anything.
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