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Movement Pushes Birth Certificates to Recognize Stillborn Babies’ Humanity

By Peter J. Smith

NEW YORK, May 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Joanne Cacciatore has waged a decade-long battle to convince elected officials to recognize the need of parents to recognize the humanity of their stillborn babies with birth certificates.

Ms. Cacciatore, the founder of the M.I.S.S. foundation and the MISSing Angels petition, spoke with LifeSiteNews.com about her own personal experience advocating the rights of herself and other parents seeking closure and the frustrating opposition she faces from abortion advocates opposed to birth certificates as some sort of stealth pro-life legislation.

Ms. Cacciatore’s experience began with the death and birth of her daughter, Cheyenne. “She was 8 pounds, 22 inches long, with dark curly hair and long fingers. She died 15 minutes before she was born on her due date,” Ms. Cacciatore recounts, saying losing her daughter was an “incredibly traumatic and overwhelming loss” for her and her three children.

“I wanted a copy of her birth certificate for her baby book,” said Ms. Cacciatore, who was struggling to cope with the myriad of painful questions parents ask themselves when their child dies just before birth. Instead, she received a death certificate, “cause unknown” from the state of Arizona. Without a birth certificate, she said the notice felt to her like “a constant reminder of my failure as a woman, that my body had failed my child.”

“[The state] said that I didn’t get a birth certificate, that I didn’t have a baby. I had a fetus, and the fetus died,” Ms. Cacciatore said. “I was dumbfounded, completely dumbfounded. I still had milk in my breasts; I had just given birth. You can’t tell a woman that pushes an 8-pound baby out that she just didn’t give birth. There’s no way around it. In the animal kingdom and human beings, birth is birth is birth.”

Nevertheless, Ms. Cacciatore turned her tragic loss around by founding the M.I.S.S. Foundation in 1996 to help women and their families cope with the loss of their stillborn children. Now it has 27 online support groups with over 25,000 members.

Then in 1999, Ms. Cacciatore began lobbying for herself and other grieving parents to change state laws, starting the MISSing Angels Bill movement. In 2001, Arizona became the first state to give birth certificates for stillborn babies and since then 19 states have followed suit, giving closure to thousands of women without birth certificates to recognize their stillborn children. Seven other states are contemplating legislation and the goal is to have all 50 states on board by 2010. (See here for the current list: http://www.missingangelsbill.org/stchart.html)

“Every legislator who would take ten minutes out of their day to meet with me about the absurdity of the law supported it, whether pro-choice or pro-life,” Ms. Cacciatore stated.

However influential pro-abortion groups such as the National Organization of Women (NOW), NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have fiercely opposed the MISSing Angels bills on the grounds that it would recognize personhood for the unborn and thus undermine a “woman’s right to choose.”

“It’s frustrating to me that pro-choices forces in essence by supporting abortion are taking away one woman’s right to choose in order to protect their agenda,” said Ms. Cacciatore. “Philosophically it’s pretty hard to deny a birth certificate to a woman who gave birth to a dead baby if you’re supporting a woman’s right to choose. Let her choose.”

Mc. Cacciatore emphasized that the M.I.S.S. Foundation in no way takes a position on abortion, but is simply dedicated to families who have lost their babies as a result of stillbirth. The trauma is real for them, the effects can be intergenerational, and the certificates provide them much needed closure as Ms. Cacciatore and other families say in a moving video found on YouTube and here (http://www.missingangelsbill.org/default.html ).

“One woman whose baby was stillborn in 1951 sent me a letter and said I want my daughter’s birth certificate so I can die in peace,” recalled Ms. Cacciatore.

“How dare we tell a group of women who want and love their babies that they’re not babies, they’re fetuses and they don’t count!”

“I am extremely frustrated that families of stillborn babies keep getting thrust in the middle of a political debate where they don’t belong. It is absurd, it is offensive, and inappropriate,” Ms. Cacciatore continued.
Besides coordinating the volunteer campaign for promoting birth certificates for stillborn babies, the non-profit M.I.S.S. Foundation also advocates increased research to help prevent stillbirth and infant death.
 
Information from MISSing Angels website indicates that an estimated 25,000-30,000 babies are born dead every year with 50% of stillbirths occuring with no diagnosable reason. Stillbirth is a leading mechanism of death in children although public health departments do not classify stillbirths in infant mortality statistics.

“The vital center of America is behind this, much like the vital center of America was behind Lacy and Connor Peterson’s Law. I have got so many phone calls, e-mails and letters of support from people who are parents, who are pro-life, who are pro-choice; from feminists, and from people who have never had children. The vital center of America supports this and rejects opposition as absurd.”

Related items of interest:

M.I.S.S. Foundation:
http://www.missfoundation.org

MISSing Angels Bill site (includes powerful YouTube video testimony by families dealing with stillbirth)
http://www.missingangelsbill.org

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Funerals Denied for Stillborn Children at Ontario Hospital
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/feb/04020904.html

Court Rules Parents Can't Sue Hospital because Stillborn Child Not a Person Under The Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/aug/04083007.html ;

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