Free Republic

Salt Lake County prosecutors on Thursday charged a West Jordan woman with criminal homicide in the death of her stillborn baby. Prosecutors claim the woman ignored repeated warnings in the last few weeks of pregnancy that the twins she was carrying could die or suffer brain damage unless she had an immediate Caesarean section. Melissa Ann Rowland, 28, had refused medical treatment, saying she would rather die than go to either of the two recommended hospitals, and that being cut "from breast bone to pubic bone" would ruin her life, the county District Attorney's Office alleges in a probable-cause statement...

FORT WORTH - Donnie and Tara Reese celebrate their son Clarence's birthday every year at his small grave in vast Greenwood Cemetery. It's one way of dealing with the loss of their son, who died at a hospital before ever taking a breath. "I bring him presents, a balloon, a cake," Tara Reese said last week as she stood over Clarence's headstone. "Everybody sits down and eats some of the cake here." Besides drawing the Reeses to the cemetery each year, the love they feel for their stillborn son has put the shy River Oaks couple into the middle of...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) _ A bill that would allow parents to be issued a birth certificate for a stillborn child is under consideration in the state Legislature. As in other states where such measures have been introduced, abortion has been drawn into the debate over the New Jersey bill. Parents of stillborn children have complained that while state law requires the babies to be buried, there are no official records that the infants were ever born. ``This is one of those small changes that the Legislature and the governor can do that can make people's lives a little better,'' bill...