Tim Loughton MP will be meeting Health Minister Dan Poulter next week to discuss proposals to introduce a registration process for stillbirths. The former Children’s Minister has been campaigning for a change in the law to recognise stillbirths before 24 weeks and introduced a Private Member’s Bill, which would amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, and recently took part in a Westminster Hall Debate on stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
During the debate Tim raised the worrying problem that peri-natal mortality (pre and post birth) rates are alarmingly high in the UK compared with other European countries. Total perinatal mortality rates now stand at 7.4 per 1,000 live births compared to Finland who has the best record at 3.2 per 1,000.
He also stated that support for women who have been through such experiences is worrying. Research by the Miscarriage Association found that 45% of women who have experienced a miscarriage did not feel well informed about what was happening to them. Only 29% feel that they were cared for emotionally, and nearly four out of five, 79%, received no aftercare. Furthermore, one in six women experience some form of perinatal mental health problems which has a great cost, socially and emotionally, to those women. He said that it is a false economy not to ensure that support is available, whether they have suffered a miscarriage early or late, or whether they have suffered a perinatal mortality either before or after birth.
Furthermore, there were 3,558 stillbirths last year; 3,811 in 2011 and 3,612 in 2003 and 1 in 200 pregnancies ends in stillbirth. However, stillbirths are currently defined in law as being after 24 weeks of gestation, which still means that there are 15 times more stillbirths than cot deaths and that is only the ones we know about after 24 weeks.
Tim said:
‘The problem with the definition is that it masks the higher number of stillbirths that happen before the 24-week gestation qualification currently in legislation. If a woman gives birth to a stillborn child at 23 weeks and six days or earlier, the child counts not as a stillbirth but as another “miscarriage.”
That was the case for my constituent Hayley, who came to see me and was present when I presented my ten-minute rule Bill in January. She had been through the dual tragic experience of giving birth to a stillborn son at about 19-and-a-half weeks. She had to have her pregnancy induced, and she went through labour. She experienced all the pains and anguish of labour in a hospital for more than 24 hours before giving birth to her son. She and her partner, Frazer, held their son and took handprints and photographs. To all intents and purposes, their son had been born, but sadly born dead. In the eyes of the law, their son did not exist, because he had been born after less than 24 weeks. That child had no recognition in the eyes of the law. Some months afterwards, Hayley tragically went on to have a miscarriage after five or six weeks. Those two experiences were different—that is in no way to belittle the pain, anger and trauma of going through a miscarriage—but in the eyes of the law, they were identical: neither of those children was recognised as having been born.
That is what my Bill is all about.’
Tim is meeting Minister Dan Poulter to discuss the content of his Bill and whether the Department of Health can introduce a system to address the situation.