THE Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, spoke in the House of Lords last week in support of a change to the legal definition of a stillbirth: from a death after 24 weeks into pregnancy to a death after 20 weeks.
Currently, the death of a baby before 24 weeks is considered to be a miscarriage, with implications for entitlement to bereavement leave and maternity protection, as the baby is not legally considered a person (Features, 11 October 2019).
Bishop Watson was speaking on the Lords Bill introduced by Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrat). It seeks to lower the threshold for a death to be considered a stillbirth.
“Up to 10,000 families in the UK lose their babies between 20 and 24 weeks of pregnancy,” Baroness Benjamin said in the debate last Friday. “These parents are excluded from maternity protections, bereavement leave and statutory recognition of their loss as a stillbirth.”
In 1992, the legal definition of stillbirth was changed from 28 to 24 weeks, but this “no longer reflects the medical realities, nor the profound emotional impact of baby loss”, she said.
She laid the focus on “human experience of loss” rather than medical definitions of viability. “I am not asking us to redefine viability; I am asking us to redefine compassion, to recognise humanity for every baby lost from 20 weeks onwards.”
The Government has agreed to explore the possibility of extending bereavement leave to the parents of babies that die before 24 weeks of gestation. Baroness Benjamin welcomed this, but said that her Bill “seeks to go much further and extend all rights and benefits that currently exist” to pregnancies lost between 20 and 24 weeks.
The World Health Organization draws the line at 22 weeks, and countries including Australia and the United States put the definition at 20 weeks.
One implication of a change in the law would be that abortions between 20 and 24 weeks would need to be recorded on the register of deaths. Baroness Benjamin suggested that, if her Bill became law, it would be appropriate to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to exclude terminations for non-medical reasons, in order, she said, to protect the “privacy and dignity” of those who had chosen to have an abortion. Surveys have suggested that most of those who terminated a pregnancy for medical reasons would still want to register a death.
Bishop Watson was the only man to speak in the debate. He related his experience as a vicar in Twickenham, and the development from within his congregation of the Crossway Pregnancy Crisis Centre, which is now the charity SEEN.
The idea had been to create “a listening service for women who had miscarried or were facing difficult or unintended pregnancies”, he said. From it, he had learnt the “sheer extent of the trauma of pregnancy loss for many mothers, and often for their partners, too”.
The Bill was “both compassionate and sensible” he said. His only concern had was about the requirement it might create for a greater number of terminated pregnancies to be added to the register of stillbirths. He felt that this concern had been well answered by Baroness Benjamin.
The Government did not support the definition of stillbirth put forward in Baroness Benjamin’s Bill, Baroness Wheeler explained, but agreed with its central concern: “to address the treatment, care and support for women and their families experiencing the trauma of pregnancy loss”.
She highlighted work being done on this area, including moves to extend bereavement leave, but suggested that the legal definition of stillbirth should remain at 24 weeks.
Moving it to 20 weeks would create “inconsistency” with the law on abortion, and would “remove the link to foetal survival”, she said, as a large majority of babies born before 24 weeks did not survive.
Baroness Benjamin thanked Baroness Wheeler for “articulating so strongly the Government’s promise and commitment to make a difference to those who suffer baby loss”, and said that she would “accept a compromise” on her Bill.
The Bill will now pass to the Committee Stage.