Dead Babies getting birth certificates
 

There was no reason to erase this thread. It violated no rule or the Terms of Service. You may not like a topic, but that doesn't give you the right to erase it so don't open this thread if you don't like adult discussions.

Women usually have miscarriages and stuff like this happens. It's nature. It's reality. But only in America, do the women feel the need to celebrate a life that never existed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22stillbirth.html

Last summer, three weeks before her due date, Sari Edber delivered a stillborn son, Jacob. “He was 5 pounds and 19 inches, absolutely beautiful, with my olive complexion, my husband’s curly hair, long fingers and toes, chubby cheeks and a perfect button nose,” she said. So Ms. Edber joined with others who had experienced stillbirth to push California legislators to pass a bill allowing parents to receive a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth.

-Rudey
--OOOOH MY POOOR BABIIIIIIES!

I heard about this awhile ago...it raises a whole lot of issues about even declaring it life or non life...defining what 'birth' is.

I think it was my joke that got the thread erased. So I apologize for its inappropriate placement.

Apologies accepted. We can joke about that sort of thing in another forum...like Academics. Lets stay serious here folks.

-Rudey

I'm not sure it's a new thing. My mom had two stillbirths in the early 60's and both were issued birth certificates.

One was delivered at 7 months, one was full-term, but stillborn. Maybe it depends on the state??:confused:

I know when I had a miscarriage, the medical forms called my baby "products of conception". :mad: Could that be any colder? At least give me 'fetus' or something that sounds human.

Well your moms case sounds warmer but do you refer to them as your dead siblings? To me it doesn't make sense to try and humanize it but I don't know. These are our opinions. Plus I also have heard most women have miscarriages so going around referring to them as your dead babies is even stranger than if it was a stillborn.

-Rudey

ok..I remember why it caused a debate...

article:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pb...30305/-1/RSS01

Last portion:

"... some have questioned whether the bill promotes the pro-life cause, but supporters say stillbirth cannot be linked to the abortion debate because it involves no voluntary termination. Florida's pro-choice groups haven't taken a position"

I believe the most commonly used number is 1 in 4, but that does not figure in those women who miscarry before they even know they're pregnant. The number could be as high as 1 in 2 with those.

I personally don't call my miscarriages "my dead babies" but for my son's birth (and any subsequent children I have, I assume) I had to list the number of pregnancies and number of live births resulting from those pregnancies. So someone, somewhere, wanted that information.

Also, miscarriages are losses that happen prior to 20 weeks. Anything past that point is medically considered a pre-term loss.

I refer to mine as 'the baby we lost'. Even if you were only a few months along, those children become very real to you. You think of names, make plans, feel them kick. What else would you call them? They are babies who are now dead. Seems a good name. I have a hard time with 'dead' though. It kind of sticks in my throat. :(

And yes, we always called them our brother and sister. They were buried, too. They looked like 'real' babies and everything and had names. We loved them even if they weren't 'human' by your standards. :) They were a part of our family.

One note.

I would never try to tell a woman that she had to give birth to the baby she was carrying if she didn't want to. That is her heart, her mind and her womb. I feel differently, but I am not her.

So why would someone feel comfortable telling a greiving mom that her baby wasn't even a real person? I know my baby was real to me the minute I found out I was pregnant. And this lady's baby was only 3 weeks shy of delivery. She carried that baby almost to the end. I can only imagine how real that baby was to her. :(

I understand grieving the loss and leave it up to each family to decide what to call the event.

But isn't wanted a birth certificate a new dimension in government co-dependent weirdness?

Why would a government form make this experience any more or less real for the people who experienced the loss?

My sis in law...lost her child about this time last year and it was very truamatic....they had a funeral and everything...I didnt go because it was just to unnerving..to imagine a child that never made it in the world and having to bury it so i can only imagine how her and her husband have been dealing with this....

From the article:

“The experience of giving birth and death at the exact same time is something you don’t understand unless you’ve gone through it,” Ms. Edber said. “The day before I was released from the hospital, the doctor came in with the paperwork for a fetal death certificate, and said, ‘I’m sorry, but this is the only document you’ll receive.’ In my heart, it didn’t make sense. I was in labor. I pushed, I had stitches, my breast milk came in, just like any other mother. And we deserved more than a death certificate.”

. . . .


To thousands of parents who have experienced stillbirth, getting a birth certificate is passionately important, albeit symbolic.

“It’s dignity and validation,” said Joanne Cacciatore, an Arizona woman who started the movement after her daughter, Cheyenne, was stillborn 13 years ago. “It’s the same reason why we want things like marriage licenses and baptismal certificates.”

Uh, no. You have a marriage license to document that you are legal able to marry, and later, you have a marriage certificate to prove you are legally married. You have a baptismal certificate to record the performance of a sacrament of your faith.

The idea that a form from the state will somehow compensate you for losing a child is crazy talk.

Birth certificates record live births. It doesn't make sense to complicate a process already ripe for exploitation by identity thieves to turn the form into some sort of state form based therapy.

She seems to be looking at a photo album full of pics of her dead child . . pics taken when the child was dead . . that doesn't strike anyone as being aberrant behavior? Morbid even?

I will say it's pretty Victorian. That was quite the norm back then, not just stillborn babies, but dead children, adults, etc. Whole photo albums. :eek:

Exactly my point. A woman can say she gave birth to an alien for all I care. But the involvement of the government is the upsetting part. It's co-dependence and a forced justification.

-Rudey

But as PP said, on a living child's birth certificate, you are required to list ALL previous births, living or still. So why is this such a weird thing? :confused: If they aren't real, why do you have to put them the living child's document?

Some states must issue birth certificates to stillborn babies because I've seen several that say "This child was born __alive __dead on month-date-year".

I would assume it's because the document is concerned about the women giving birth, not what she gives birth to. But I don't know.

-Rudey

You mean like maybe a London Broil?:rolleyes: Did you really just post that?

My birth certificate and those of my kids are titled "Certificate of Live Birth", which we shorten to birth certificate when we refer to it. The name of it would have to change if it was not a "live birth". I do know that, in Michigan, there is a set gestational age for the necessity of naming a baby and issuing a death certificate in the case of a miscarriage/still birth. I'm not certain what the cut point is but the number 32 weeks is in my head.

I don't think that to them, a piece of paper from the government is compensation for their losing a child. I do believe it is an important avenue or symbol in which they can express their grief.

There's a dead baby joke in here somewhere, I just know it.

Yes I did and as emotional as your comment may be, it's not valid and you know it. Perhaps a medical condition can arise from having too many births. Whatever it is. But whether the baby is alive or dead, or a long broil wouldn't matter in my mind. Forcing the government to do that is paramount to trying to get validity for a particular belief. And to me, that belief is disturbing because as James points out I find it strange that you celebrate a baby that is dead with a scrapbook and more. And as much as I want to say we're all entitled to our opinions, getting the government involved makes my opinion null and void.

-Rudey

But that's messed up in itself, it seems to me.

Why would a birth certificate be more significant than a death certificate as far as validating a person as real?

I don't think the government should be in the "symbols of grief" business. If a church or family wants to mark the birth with a certificate or document, that would be a fine avenue or symbol for expressing grief, but pushing to change the laws in states that don't currently do this is seeking something from the government that the government has no business doing.

Birth certificates make sense in terms of creating the first records of a person's legal existence. I can see the state's interest in that. But in cases in which the record is ended before it legally begins, it's hard to make a case why the gov't should do this. A death certificate dispenses with the legitimate legal interest of the state, as near as I can tell.

(If the state doesn't recognize the legal personhood of the baby in the womb, for the most part, why should it be issuing documents that the recognize the baby's personhood retroactively?

And in case anyone is interested, if Alphagamuga ran the world, abortions would be severely restricted and we WOULD recognized the legal personhood of people in utero. But so far no one has appointed me Queen of the Universe and third trimester abortions can even be performed in some cases. If the state would not issue a birth certificate for an aborted fetus of the same age, it's really hard for me to see how the disposition of the mother towards the baby and the method of extraction of the fetus should change the response of the gov't to the occasion. )

Trying to make people feel better isn't a good enough reason for the government to do something, in my opinion.

I don't think it's obsessive. I don't know if under similar circumstances, I would want a photo and knowing that the babies in the photos are dead freaks me out a little, but it actually makes more sense to me as far as validating the idea of a real person and traditional mourning than wanting a birth certificate.

If you had a child who lived outside the womb and then died, you'd probably look photos from when he or she was alive. Since these parents don't have the option of the picture of the live baby, a photo of the body is the only way to remember, I guess.

ETA: I'm not sure why I was re-reading this, but there used to be a post about a certain kind of photography that I was responding to.

To. Each. His. Own.

This is what strikes me weird about this as well. I know people have their own ways of grieving and dealing with things, but it seems a bit far to get the government involved.

Okay that's BS, I spent a good 20 minutes finding those links yesterday and now they're gone.
I'm reposting this one because I think it's relevant and a testimony to how crazy parents of stillborns can be:

NSFW
http://www.babyphotoretouch.com

This link contains pictures of stillborns, before and after photoshop. If you cannot handle looking at a dead baby or you're at work, do not click on it.

Also http://www.miscarriagesoflove.com

This may be NSFW, if only for the crappy music in the background.

This woman had 14 miscarriages and now she has a website dedicated to her dead fetuses (is it even a fetus at 7 weeks? because it seems like they all made it to 7 weeks and then died).

I agree. Nobody made anyone look. You were very clear about they contained, and it was closely related to a central issue in the thread.

I'm choosing not to look at this webpage, but I think anybody on here who prays should say a prayer for this woman.

And it's not even good Photoshopping, either.

No kidding! It is difficult having 1 miscarriage (recently been there and done that) but 14? :eek: