A recent study published this week reveals that most hospitals, maternity care staff and physicians are insensitive in dealing with women experiencing pregnancy loss – probably not an unexpected finding to anyone who has lost a child through miscarriage, stillbirth or perinatal death. The study was conducted by the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services – Ireland (AIMSI) and focused on women having miscarriages. Those surveyed reported receiving care for their miscarriage on the labor and delivery floor, right next to women at the end of a long pregnancy about to give birth to a living child, God willing. One of the respondents reported being traumatized by hearing the sounds of a busy delivery room as she was dealt the news she would lose her tiny baby to miscarriage.

Although the subject of the article centers on the mishandling of miscarriages, it brings back nightmarish memories of my own labor and delivery story – the silent birth of my first child, Nicolas, one week after his due date. After waiting patiently for 41 weeks, convinced we were out of the “danger zone,” i.e., the first trimester (oh, how naïve I was then), we went to the hospital on February 28, 2006, excited that labor had finally started, only to be told our son had “no heartbeat.” Lying next to me in the same room were two other laboring women, hooked up to Dopplers, the strong swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of their babies’ heartbeats echoing along with my sobs. I was finally taken to a private room and given Pitocin as my labor slowed. I was told my contractions stopped because usually babies help progress labor, but in my case… I wanted to tell them Nicolas wasn’t being difficult – he was dead.

I labored for about 23 hours, thankfully much of that time lost in a fog of pain and shock. But every now and then, from another room down the hall, the sweet, mocking sound of a newborn cry and the cheers of nurses would creep into my consciousness. Every now and then I would hear that strong swoosh next door and realize my nurses didn’t even bother to put a heartbeat monitor on me. The following day, in my recovery room, a nursing assistant came in with an sunny smile on his face and told me it was time to take my prenatal vitamin. I had just given my son’s body back to the nurse for the final time and was in no mood for false cheer. As he left the room with that damn pill still in the little Dixie cup, I glimpsed just outside my door a new mom and dad with their breathing baby bundled in an infant carrier, ready to go home. I could take no more and demanded to be released. I was given a prescription for Motrin for the physical pain and two anxiety pills for the emotional trauma that lie ahead (they were concerned I would take all the pills at once, so I only got two). The pharmacist congratulated me on the birth of my baby as she handed me my prescriptions, and all I could choke out was, “thank you.” My husband pulled the car around, and I climbed in, Nicolas’ empty car seat in the back. We went home and shut the door to Nicolas’ waiting nursery.

I wonder now if my experience would have been better if I were quietly taken to a room far enough away from the “normal” labor and delivery floor so I wouldn’t have heard those Doppler heartbeats and newborn cries, so I wouldn’t have seen living babies next to my dead son. I wonder if it’s asking too much to be treated respectfully but separately from other laboring women, to be handled a bit more sensitively and to be spared those painful reminders of what I would never have with Nicolas.

Governor Sarah Palin this week signed a bill into law enabling grieving parents in Alaska to apply for and receive an official birth certificate for their much-loved and much-wanted stillborn babies. This seemingly simple bill has, once again, ignited a firestorm of controversy among opposing sides of the abortion debate. Any mother who has labored for hours, often more than a full day, or had her uterus cut open in a last ditch effort to save her baby’s life — only to bring forth a dead child — has been through enough trauma without becoming the rope in a tug-of-war between the liberal left and the conservative right.

Pro-choicers vehemently oppose any language that would grant the status of “human being” on an unborn child, regardless of gestation — four weeks or forty weeks, it doesn’t matter. Until there is no longer those few inches of mom’s flesh between child and the outside world, pro-choice advocates need that baby to be called “fetus.” It’s a slippery slope of legal jargon. Admitting that a baby who makes it to 20 weeks gestation and beyond (the medical definition of stillbirth) is an actual human being may, over time, lead to the legal definition of a fertilized egg as a human being as well — thus effectively illegalizing abortion. I read a pro-choicer’s comment today who said, “one problem: you can’t be born if you’re dead.” I imagine he was speaking metaphorically because, as a mother who went through 41 weeks of pregnancy and 23 hours of a labor, only to push out a dead son, I can assure you it is quite possible for a baby to be born after he dies. In fact, the physical process of labor and delivery — the unrelenting contractions, the uncontrollable shaking and increase in blood pressure, the utter exhaustion from pushing your baby through the birth canal, the tearing and ripping of your flesh — they are the same whether the baby is alive or dead. I have given birth twice: once to a dead baby and once to a living baby. It was the same process both times.

The pro-lifers are no better than their antagonists on this issue. Rather than sponsor this type of legislation out of a legitimate concern for grieving parents, they use it as a poorly veiled attempt to further their political agenda. They see our tragedy as a vehicle for changing the legal definition of a fetus, which would, of course, hasten their goal of illegalizing abortion. Pro-lifers are announcing Palin’s signing of this Alaska state bill into law as a “respect for the sanctity of life.” While I would never argue that my stillborn son, Nicolas, is undeserving of such a description, I can’t help but be irritated by the pro-life advocates’ choice of words — the same words they use to argue against abortion. Their announcement smacks of a political poke at pro-choice advocates, which makes their seeming support of grieving parents insincere at best.

Something as simple as a birth certificate for stillborn babies to recognize the fact that the mother still gave birth and her child was real, even if it is termed a “Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth” in an effort to pacify the temper-tantrum-throwing political left and right, should not be such a controversy. I mean, really, who but the grieving parent should care?

This fight has nothing to do with us. Take your political agenda somewhere else.