Governor's veto sparks response

SB 17, sponsored by Sen. Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Dona Ana and Sierra, swept unanimously through three committees of the Senate and a companion bill did the same in the House. The Senate approved it 33-3, while the House voted 59-0.

On Friday, the governor sent it back to the Senate with his veto message, citing a technicality in the language.

In a press release distributed the next day, supporters of the New Mexico MISSing Angels Bill described it as "a measure of comfort, dignity and legal documentation for women and their families who experience the death of a baby just prior to or during birth."

The bill defined stillbirth as a "spontaneous fetal death that occurs where the fetus weighs 500 grams (about 1.1 pounds) or that occurs after 20 weeks of gestation." The bill also required a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth to be filed with the vital statistics bureau.

The governor's veto message said the bill "refers to both 'certificate of fetal death' and 'certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth,'" and that the term "stillbirth" is not used by statistical health agencies.

According to the governor's statement, the bill "would require the production of two documents for a single event," which could lead to "confusion and potential fraud, and is not sound policy."

Halo Golden, a resident of Los Alamos who suffered a stillbirth in 2003, said Friday that she disputed the rationale.

If her son had died three days after birth, there would have been no problem getting documents that registered his birth and his death, she said, but since he died three days before he was born, he was recorded as a fetal death on a document that is kept for 18 months, without a permanent record.

"It is insulting, demeaning and inadequate," she said. "Birth is a process - still or live is the end result."

Not to recognize the process of birth or the mother's role in it is insensitive, she added.

The bill may have been mistakenly caught up in the pro-choice, pro-life controversy.

"We tried to stay out of that debate," Golden said.

But along the way, questions were raised in committees, said Rawson, who carried the bill unsuccessfully in 2005 and describes himself as pro-life. There were those who saw in the bill an attempt to assign rights to the unborn fetus that would take precedent over current abortion laws, he said.

"We assured them it has nothing to do with the abortion issue, and that we were not trying to back-door the approach," said Rawson, noting the overwhelming support in both houses.

Rawson said that if the governor had understood it wasn't an abortion issue, he would have signed it.

"I credit the veto to a misrepresentation of the bill by his advisors," he said.

A Fiscal Impact Report prepared by the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) stated that the New Mexico Department of Health currently counts 81 fetal deaths per year in the state, or 4.3 per 1000 live births.

Rawson and Golden are both committed to pursuing the legislation next year, if it can be considered during the short session, or the following year, if not.

"If there were a slight technical issue, there would be no big deal about addressing it next year," Rawson said.

"You might say I'm personally invested," said Golden. "We will be here until its law, however long that takes."

The MISSing Angel bill, which gets part of its name from a founding support group, Mothers in Support and Sympathy, has been passed in 17 states so far, including Arizona and Texas.