After the Department of Health and Social Care published the “Pregnancy Loss Review” on July 22, the U.K. government has decided to take an important step forward in recognizing the humanity of pre-born children who die in the womb and the grief of parents who lose them. The review had sought a “vision for improving the care and support available to families when baby loss occurs before 24 weeks’ gestation,” and to that end the government has decided to introduce, with immediate effect, a “certificate of baby loss” for parents who request one.
The pro-life group CARE noted that the government “is also committed to reviewing existing guidance on the sensitive handling of baby remains following awful stories of women being told to retrieve the remains of their baby from the toilet or store them in the fridge.” According to a CARE spokeswoman: “We welcome this new certificate. It’s absolutely right the Government recognises the very real sadness and trauma that go along with losing a baby through miscarriage. But it is sad that we still fail to properly acknowledge the number of babies lost to abortion pre-24 weeks. We think every baby lost, whether through abortion or miscarriage is a tragedy and should be recognised as such.”
It is an indication of how fundamentally dishonest abortion supporters are that the U.K. government is perfectly comfortable referring to miscarriage before 24 weeks — the legal abortion limit in the U.K. — as “baby loss.” If miscarriage is “baby loss,” then abortion is, by logical extension, “baby killing.” Yet the government’s position is that if the baby dies naturally, it was a baby. If the baby is violently killed by an abortionist, it is not. Nobody in power is even remotely interested in attempting to explain this ugly moral schizophrenia.
Other countries have taken similar steps — and with similar discussions taking place as a result. In February 2019, the law in the Netherlands formally changed in response to a petition signed by 82,000 people, the government now allows people to register their stillborn children as a legal person in the Personal Records Database, something that had not previously been permitted. The push for this change had been led by mothers who wished their sons and daughters who died before birth to be recognized as people of value. A woman who deeply regretted her abortion promptly came forward to register her aborted baby as a legal person, a situation that made many deeply uncomfortable.
