Editor,
Though I am not a resident of
New Mexico, I am a citizen of the U.S., part of the nationwide constituency of the future president. I am also part of the immense population of bereaved mothers who are shocked, offended and appalled by Gov. Bill Richardson's veto of bill SB17 and his callous and unthinking response in his accompanying veto message. No grieving mother of a stillborn child would have any sort of wish to defraud the government. The bill does not provide for "two documents for a single event," but for certificate of birth and a certificate of death as a result of a stillbirth.
In any situation, including a stillbirth, a baby's death is separate from its birth. The word stillbirth itself makes clear that the child is born still, meaning dead. The death occurred prior to the birth - a separate event. A mother of a stillborn child endures the same physical pain and anguish any mother does and does it all with the heart-wrenching knowledge that her precious child - this baby she has carried inside her body, nurtured, talked to, sung to and dreamed of - will be born dead at the end of her labors.
Nearly 30 other states in our nation have passed this bill. The New Mexico Legislature passed this bill unanimously. The purpose of this bill is to give dignity and respect to the thousands of children all over our nation whose lives are taken daily as a result of a stillbirth - to provide some small measure of comfort to their mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who will live with the pain of an incomplete family forever. In New Mexico, families of stillborn children are expected to pay the full birth and hospitalization costs, as well as funeral and burial or cremation costs - two major expenditures for one vital event, to use Richardson's language - but cannot be comforted by the simple yet profound act of recognition from their governor that their child was born and died. Fetal death may be the medical term, but to thousands of grieving families, a stillbirth is the death of their loved and longed-for child.
Mothers of dead babies all across this country, including me, demand that Richardson issue an apology to New Mexico, constituents and the Legislature for ignoring their clear and decisive voices, and to the mothers and fathers and extended families of all stillborn children across this nation, for ignoring their anguish and minimizing their grief and pain. All of us call upon Richardson to issue an apology to the entire country, and to call a special session immediately to pass SB17.
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Should he be lucky enough to gain his party's nomination for the presidency in 2008, I hope he will be able to use the action of apologizing to a nation of grieving families and calling a special session to pass this bill to demonstrate that he can indeed be sensitive and responsive to the voices of the nation while having the courage to acknowledge his own grave mistake. I urge Richardson to do the right thing.
Karla Helbert
Daily Lobo reader
