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May 15, 2007

Senate seconds House OK on stillborn bill

PROVIDENCE -- The Senate unanimously passed, without debate, a bill that would allow the parents of stillborns at 20 weeks of gestation or more to request birth certificates.

Currently, the parents of stillborns receive only a "certificate of fetal death," although many babies die minutes before birth. Had they taken even one breath outside the womb, parents would receive birth certificates -- proof, they say, that their children existed.

There were 85 such fetal deaths in Rhode Island in 2005, the most recent data available from the state Health Department.

The bill was introduced on behalf of Melissa Silva, Bristol, whose son, Christopher Michael Silva, was stillborn in 2004. Similar legislation cleared the House earlier in the month.

The nurses, as they do with many stillborn parents, gave Silva and her husband a lock of their dead son's hair. They took photographs of the infant with a digital camera and put them in a special album. And they made footprints.

But the Silvas wanted legal proof that their son existed.

- Steve Peoples, Journal State House Bureau

Posted by Steve Peoples  at 5:33 PM | Permalink

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