It's almost the exact opposite of the stillborn baby thrown in a New Jersey hospital's trash - and just as horrifying.
When a British mother suffered her second miscarriage, she went to the hospital to see if she could arrange a funeral for little Jonah.
He had already been cremated, the hospital told her. But her first son, miscarried two years ago at twelve weeks, was still in the hospital, they said. Would she like him?
Leanne McCabe had been told baby Ty was cremated shortly after her miscarriage because of a British law that requires babies stillborn before twenty-four weeks be "disposed of" by the hospital, usually via cremation. Why she never returned for his cremains is unclear (although it IS clear she wasn't aware that his body was still lying in a mortuary two years later).
McCabe's discovery has since led to the hospital's admission that hers isn't the only stillborn baby awaiting his parents' final wishes to be carried out. Two more suffered what hospital administration dubbed a "delay."
I know it's coincidence that this story came up just over a week after the missing New Jersey baby tale. It's hardly a pandemic. But what do these stories say about how the world treats stillborn and miscarried babies? Do these hospital officials think they matter less or that the outrage would be diminished because the children never actually breathed in the real world?
Moms who suffer through miscarriage and stillbirth already suffer with the misperception that their grief should somehow be less because, well, "at least you didn't have a child and lose it." No, in many ways they didn't have a child - they had a baby who they never got to enjoy, but that doesn't diminish their feelings of love or the depth of their loss. And their children all deserve the same amount of respect in the end.
Image/Source: BBC
Related Posts:
