What do you think?

 
On May 17, 2005, two days before the due date, Susan DiBlasi's pregnancy ended in a stillbirth.

DiBlasi and her husband, Andrew, called the child Luke.

"We named him," said Susan DiBlasi, of Oswego. "We held him. My sister bathed him. We mourned him and we buried him."

But the state never recognized Luke: New York doesn't issue birth certificates for stillbirths. Parents can get a fetal death certificate, but that doesn't include names.

DiBlasi and other parents around the country have been pushing state governments to change that. Legislation has passed in 15 states and is pending in 12 others, including New York.

Advocates believe there may be enough momentum this year to get New York's bill out of committee, where it stalled in two other legislative sessions. However, some lawmakers remain fearful that the law, known as "the missing angels act," would become a tool of anti-abortion activists.

In the state Assembly, the bill is in the health committee. Chair Richard Gottfried, D-New York, met with parents last month and his office drafted a new version last week to make sure it is medically accurate.

"It's very important that the legislation not contain language that incorrectly characterizes the fetus as a child because some versions of this bill do that and that to me would have unacceptable consequences for other issues," Gottfried said.

"I certainly hope we can have language that everyone is comfortable with and that we can get a bill enacted this year," he said.

In the 15 states that have laws on the books granting certificates of birth resulting in stillbirth, news accounts have not cited instances of anti-abortion advocates taking action based on them.

However, the debate over whether the law could add fuel to the abortion debate often comes up in statehouse discussions. In California, sponsors in 2002 withdrew a bill on the issue, although it has since been reintroduced, because it was opposed by medical associations in that state.

The California wing of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that the bill was a backdoor way of requiring reporting of abortions after 20 weeks and could violate women's privacy rights. But some laws, including the New York bill, use the words "naturally occurring intrauterine death" so that it would not apply to abortion.

The bill's language is also very important to parents, said Janet Press, perinatal bereavement services coordinator at Crouse Hospital. Parent advocates working with the nonprofit MISS Foundation, which provides support to parents who have lost a child, want to see the words: "a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth."

"Parents don't want a certificate of stillbirth," Press said. "They don't want another death certificate."

Press said she gets at least one phone call a week from parents who experienced a stillbirth and are asking why they don't get any records from the state. Fetal death certificates only arrive if parents request them, but they can take months to arrive and don't include names.

"There's so little that these families have and so little that they ask for," Press said. "You want to provide them with something that feels official."

Press and DiBlasi said that for parents involved this is not an issue that has to do with the abortion debate.

"Sometimes politics gets in the way of what we really want to accomplish," Press said. "I understand though that in the climate where we're trying to do this, there are people out there who are looking to personify the fetus."

The New York State Right to Life Committee does support the stillbirth bill, said Lori Kehoe, speaking for the committee.

"When a child dies before birth, the anguish is complicated by others not understanding the depth of our grief, mistakenly believing there is no history, no memories, no real loss," Kehoe said "This legislation would acknowledge the life and death and birth of these children."

NARAL Pro-Choice New York - one of the state's leading pro-choice advocacy groups - is watching this legislation, but doesn't have a position on it.

About 60 parents a year in Central New York have pregnancies that end with the death of the child after 20 weeks gestation, which is known as stillbirth. Before that point, it is considered a miscarriage.

While some causes of stillbirth are known, such as high blood pressure or diabetes in the mother, doctors don't know the cause in more than half of the cases. That was the case for the DiBlasi family.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, calling stillbirth an under-studied and under-documented problem, funded a $3 million, five-year project in 2003 to address stillbirth. The institute said that stillbirths occur in one in 200 births, although the MISS Foundation uses the figure one in 100 births.

The National Institutes of Health acknowledge that data is uncertain because the criteria for reporting varies from state to state.

The $3 million project established the Stillbirth Research Collaborative Network that set up five research centers and a data center. Researchers will design studies to determine the causes of stillbirth and will establish guidelines for reporting and investigating stillbirths.

Finding out why stillbirths happen and improving the record-keeping is one of Susan DiBlasi's goals.

"The statistics on stillbirth are so poor. They can't track them," she said. "We can't possibly know why we're losing these children."

Parents like DiBlasi have gotten increasingly more active in their lobbying efforts, helped by Internet organizing. The MISS Foundation tracks all legislation pending in statehouses across the country with links to the legislatures and the organizers.

DiBlasi said she knows about 80 parents who have lost a child who are working on this issue.

Gottfried said he met with about half a dozen parents earlier this month and that part of what may make the legislation pass his committee this year is that the parents were open to changing the language.

"I'm impressed with both the determination and the flexibility of the advocates this year," he said.

The bill was introduced before in 2003-04 and 2005-06.

The Assembly bill, sponsored by Nancy Calhoun, R-Blooming Grove, has 14 co-sponsors, including William Barclay, R-Pulaski and Gary Finch, R-Springport.

The Senate bill is sponsored by William Larkin, R-Cornwall-on-Hudson, and has five co-sponsors, including state Sen. James Wright, R-Watertown.

State Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, is leaning toward supporting the bill, but wants to hear the debate on the floor before making a final decision, said Deanna Cohen, speaking for DeFrancisco.

© 2007 The Post-Standard.