Dead Babies getting birth certificates

[UGAalum94]

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.

[James]

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?

[JWithers]

Originally Posted by James

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.

[Munchkin03]

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

[ISUKappa]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

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

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.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by ISUKappa

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.

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.

[UGAalum94]

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.

[1908Revelations]

To. Each. His. Own.