er, wonk extremists

What exactly is the purpose of a birth certificate? This is the crux of the matter.

A legal birth certificate doesn't verify personhood. A person is still a person even without one. It's only purpose is to make certain transactions with the government easier to accomplish. Such as:

documenting age for entry to school

documenting place of birth for citizenship

assisting in gaining a passport

assisting in gaining a driver's license

assisting in gaining a Social Security number

Since a stillborn child will never need to do any of this, there is no reason to have one issued. The personhood is verified by the parents and family - as with any other child.

This said, I'm also not at all certain why there is a need for a legal death certificate to be issued for a stillborn child either.

The slippery slope arguement sounded reasonable to me, but as it turns out California law already has conflicting definitions about a fetus, and so far we're doing just fine. Abortion is legal until around about viability, but as far as homicide of a fetus is concerned, that starts at a mere 7 weeks. If those two facts can live in harmony, perhaps a stillborn birth certificate can exist in a pro-choice state as well.

Pregnancy is so incredibly horrible, that is what moves me to be pro-choice. People who say, aw, cmon, just give it up for adoption, are failing to realize just how terrible and all-encompasingly impactful pregnancy really is. It is also what moves me to understand that if you go through the entire thing, only to have NOTHING to show for it, that is a tragedy I cannot comprehend and hope I never have to.

Maybe they don't need a "live birth" certificate, since there wasn't a live birth. But other letters have mentioned possible compromises, like a "still birth certificate." Instead of taking a gentle tack like that, you just attack the parents as being irrational. That's inexcusably callous, there's just no two ways about it!

Ask gays why they care about having a piece of paper. Sure there's the taxes as whatnot, but so many just gush about the recognition. If a woman has a stillbirth and never has any other children, I think 100 yrs from now, people should be able to know through geneological records that she DID have a child, and knowing that that will happen may be very, very important to her. Documents ARE important.

Friends of mine are expecting a daughter in August. The ultrasounds have revealed a twin is present, and that that twin died somewhere around 10 weeks, but hasn't been reabsorbed or ejected.

I'm all for giving grieving parents what they want or need in terms of paperwork, but I'm wary of anything that thrust this sad shadow over what will (with a bit of luck) be a joyful experience for my friends.

My first child, a boy, was stillborn after a full-term pregnancy on Christmas day, 1960. My husband and the obstetrician decided without consulting me to have the body cremated and disposed of as if he had never been. The child was not named, neither my husband nor I ever saw the body, and we were not given either a birth or a death certificate (unless my husband was given one and destroyed it).

Although I went on to have two healthy children, I always wished that I could have at least seen my first-born, if only to satisfy myself that he wasn't some sort of monster. My husband and I were eventually divorced, and although his "taking care" of this matter without asking me wasn't the main cause, it was certainly among them. Several years ago my 35 year old son told me that we should erect a marker to the baby boy on our family cemetery plot, and so I did. Amazingly, I felt much better for having done this simple thing. Acknowledging the grief rather than forgetting about it is a big improvement over the last 47 years, no matter what form it takes.

1. If a fetus isn't a "human life", is it non-human? is it chimp, puppy or cat? Or isn't it "life" What part of "human life" isn't it?

2. If a fetus isn't a "person", when and where down that slippery slope does it become a person? What is it that magically confers "personhood" upon a fetus?

Well, in the case of an adult human, personhood and life are defined by the presence of higher brain functions, and/or the ability to survive without heroic medical intervention. It's possible for someone with a beating heart to nevertheless be legally brain dead. It's possible for someone to ask for life support to be discontinued and pass away. A fetus, before a certain stage, has neither higher brain functions nor the ability to survive without the mother.

Your questions are ones I've heard before and they always strike me as ingenuous. There are many things which are alive (in the sense of being able to die) or human (in the sense of having human DNA) which are nevertheless not people. Sperm are alive but not people. Cancers are living tissue attached to humans but a cancer is not a life. I'm not suggesting that a fetus is either a sperm or a cancer, merely that a little thought should suggest that there are many possibilities more subtle than "It's not dead therefore it must be alive; it's not a puppy therefore it must be a person." A fetus is a fetus and not like anything other than a fetus. Fetuses exist in more than three dimensions - time as well as space. They are made up of DNA but also made up of potential; they are made up of the fears and dreams of their parents. That's why many people find it possible to believe simultaneously that someone who kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach until she miscarries should be prosecuted for murder, but that the same pregnant woman could visit an abortion clinic and terminate her pregnancy without being guilty of killing a baby.

I'm not sure it's possible to legislate fears and dreams. There are some things laws are very bad at doing, and sifting human emotions is one of them. Part of me feels great sympathy for AnnieC305:

As someone who has been through five miscarriages hearing that all the changes your body has gone through were meaninless, all your hopes and dreams are pointless, and that human shaped object with eyes, hands and feet you had to drag down to the ER just a lump of tissue to be tossed in the trash is both heartbreaking and crazy-making. At least if they had to issue a certificate the hospital staff would have to acknowledge that you lost a baby, and hopefully acknowledge your grief. Sometimes you just have to show paperwork to get people to believe you.

...yet another part of me can't help but point out, that whether you like it or not, as unfair as it seems, those changes your body went through were meaningless, the hopes and dreams will not come true, and that human shaped object in the trash is now (as one day you and I will be) nothing more than a lump of tissue. It wasn't a baby. It was a fetus. Maybe it was part of your spirit torn out and put through a blender. But not a baby. It doesn't need a certificate of live birth because there was no live birth. Pretending won't make it so.

For what it's worth, I've suffered a 5-month miscarriage myself. I can't say I felt grief (it all seemed too unreal) and never did think of the experience in terms of "my lost baby," although occasionally I wonder what my life would be like now if I had a 19-year-old son. I know other women who have described miscarriages in terms of a sense of relief. The mother of a friend of mine, who suffered several miscarriages in an attempt to have children before finally adopting, believed fervently that "That thing in the toilet was not a baby." On the other hand, I have a friend trying to get pregnant who grieves every month when she gets her period, for the loss of the child she held in her mind, even though there never was a conception. It seems to me that there are as many reactions to the loss of an unborn as there are women, and that whether or not any something gets called a "baby" depends more on what the woman wants to believe than on anything measurable by science.

Isn't there a way to comfort parents of stillborn children for their very real grief without telling lies, as a "certificate of live birth" would be?