Odessa

A generation plus ago, my mother gave birth to a full-term stillbirth. My father saw the baby - my mother never did. There was absolutely no thought given to naming a baby that never took a breath. There was no thought to marking her grave. No one even blinked an eye that my parents might be in mourning. A few years ago, a friend of mine lost a full term baby. Her and her husband named the baby, had her cremated and buried her ashes under a tree in the yard. The hospital staff were very sympathetic. Both were horrible losses handled in very different ways.

This past summer a Texas couple lost their baby. The woman was in her 2nd trimester, that is between 3 and 6 months gestation. A horrible loss, but it was not nearly a full term baby. The couple went so far as to name the fetus. The couple is now suing the hospital for sending their stillborn son to the cleaners with the soiled linens rather than the morgue - citing "severe emotional distress and mental anguish". While I do find it disturbing and rather disgusting that the hospital would be so careless with biological material, I can understand the mistake. A fetus during this stage of development is about the size of a peach, about 3 to 4 inches long and about 1.5 lbs.

I find it rather evolved that now the medical establishment consider a full-term fetus a baby. Asking the medical establishment, or anyone else, to consider a fetus that is not viable outside the womb and is smaller than many things surgeons send to the incinerator a baby might be expecting a bit much. I encourage the grieving "parents" to grieve in their own way, but leave the courts out of it. The hospital didn't cause the miscarriage, they just perhaps handled the after effects inappropriately.

Maybe I sound a bit heartless, but where do we draw the line? Will we start naming and holding vigils for zygotes when a woman miscarries? And what about the handling of an aborted fetus?