(Tell my personal experience with Cheyenne’s death here—)

This tragedy strikes everywhere. According to the Center for Positive Outcomes in Pregnancy in Washington DC, there are 39K stillbirths in the US every year. In 1999, there were more than 600 in Arizona. This has affected our neighbors, my husband’s friends within the fire dept, even your fellow legislators. Historically, we share this horrific experience with John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Ernest and Pauline Hemingway, and John and Jackie Kennedy, whose stillborn daughter is buried with her parents and siblings.

Dr. John DeFrain of the Univ of Nebraska did an intensive research study of stillbirth in the early 80’s. Many of the hundreds of participants expressed deep pain and anxiety about the lack of validation for the experience of birth. I asked myself while re-reading this study the other day, “Why didn’t they do anything about it then?”

I don’t know. But here I stand before you today, asking you to make this right.

Childbirth is a unique physiological experience for women. It is such an important event that we celebrate it every year in a ritual called the ‘birthday.’  Suzanne Arms, internationally acclaimed author and photojournalist said of childbirth: Birth is an inherently successful process that is a major social, economic, political, spiritual, and environmental issue

Ask any woman why she would endure the pain and agony of giving birth and she will tell you because of the ‘reward’ at the end…it is ‘all worth it,’ we frequently hear. But what about the silent births- the women who get no reward for all their hard work…

Arizona, as all other states in the US, currently issues the “Certificate of Fetal Death” for stillborn infants. This document is a cruel and oppressive reminder of a woman’s failure to produce a healthy living baby.  Women who endure stillbirth must still give birth- a physiological process that includes great physical pain, incalculable emotional investment, postpartum symptomology, and financial sacrifice.

We are asking you to change this.  Women deserve a birth certificate for their babies.  Other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, and Ireland currently issue birth certificates for stillborns. It is time for the United States to join these countries in their support of women.

HB2416 is the right thing to do for Arizona women and their families. It is a change long overdue.  We cannot issue merely a death certificate to the women who give birth to stillborns. The birth, too, must be acknowledged in a compassionate and sympathetic way.  This is the right and just thing to do. And as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”