Stillbirth Remembrance Day
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In the United States and Canada, Stillbirth Remembrance Day is a day set aside each year to honor and remember babies that have been stillborn. In many cases, this definition is expanded to include babies lost to miscarriage, SIDS, and complications of pregnancy, including ectopic pregnancies, among others. In light of this latter definition, Stillbirth Remembrance Day is sometimes known as Stillbirth and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, or something similar.
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[edit] Official Recognition of the Stillborn
In recent years, there has been a lobby by parents who have lost babies to stillbirth in particular, for governors of U. S. states and premiers of Canadian provinces to issue official proclamations for a particular day to be Stillbirth Remembrance Day in their state or province. This is in line with similar lobbies for the so-called "Missing Angels" bills that would mandate the issuance of stillbirth certificates recognizing a stillborn baby's name and vital statistics, lending official recognition to the stillborn baby's albeit brief existence and hence ensuring that a stillborn baby is seen in the same light as her living siblings. As of September 2005, the legislatures of 28 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces had passed or were considering laws mandating such certificates, which are interestingly already available in the UK and other European countries. A few more U.S. states have legislated a day of remembrance of the stillborn.
[edit] History of Stillbirth Remembrance Day
The idea of an annual day to remember stillborns followed perhaps the most notable stillbirth in recent years, that of Breanna Lynn Bartlett-Stewart in September 2000. In Breanna Lynn's home state of Arkansas, widespread media coverage following her stillbirth sparked a unprecedented public awareness of the seemingly random and largely unknown killer of more than 26,000 babies each year in the United States alone. In response to public lobbying, the state legislature of Arkansas passed a law proclaiming Breanna Lynn's birthday, September 6, to be Arkansas Stillbirth Remembrance Day; the day was first observed on what would have been Breanna Lynn's first birthday, September 6, 2001. This proclamation was warmly welcomed by most Arkansans, even if they had no personal connection to a stillborn baby. On this day, the noon news in Little Rock showed motorists on Interstate 30 traveling with their lights on in memory of the stillborn.
Following Arkansas' example, several other Southeastern U.S. states passed laws enacting September 6 to be Stillbirth Remembrance Day in time for Breanna Lynn's second birthday in 2002. With each passing year, more U. S. states issued similar proclamations; on September 6, 2005, Breanna Lynn Bartlett-Stewart's fifth birthday, 39 U.S. states officially paused to remember babies lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death. The eleven other U.S. states that had not yet proclaimed September 6 as Stillbirth Remembrance Day were
- Alaska
- Connecticut
- Hawaii
- Maine
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New Hampshire
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
It should be noted that significant lobbies exist in each of these remaining states to proclaim an official day of stillbirth remembrance.
[edit] Stillbirth Remembrance Day in Canada
In 2003, the premiers of three Canadian provinces - New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario - issued proclamations of the observance of September 6 as Stillbirth Remembrance Day in those provinces. In 2006, Nova Scotia observed Stillbirth Remembrance Day for the first time. Other provinces have been slow to proclaim a day of remembrance of the stillborn; particularly in the prairie provinces, this is likely due to the fact that stillbirths are relatively rare, due to the low overall populations of these provinces.
[edit] National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (United States)
October 15 has been proclaimed by Congress as National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day in the United States. Many U. S. state governors have made similar proclamations in the last two years, effectively creating two annual days for the remembrance of infant loss. In general, October 15 is set aside by many states as a day to honor babies who were miscarried, lost as the result of pregnancy complications, or lost as the result of SIDS. In this way, the special case of a stillbirth, the cause of which is quite often unknown, is differentiated from infant losses that have more specifically understood causes.
[edit] National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (New Brunswick, Canada)
A similar national day of remembrance of infant loss has also been proclaimed in New Brunswick, Canada. Other Canadian provinces, however, have yet to make such a proclamation.
