One mum’s fight to get birth certificates for stillborn babies

“My daughter was stillborn at 23 weeks and four days… yet she will never have a birth certificate.”

Sarah Henderson lost her daughter, Rowan, six months into her pregnancy. Having spent seven hours in labour, Sarah delivered her naturally but was left heartbroken when legally she was not allowed to call her stillborn. “She is legally described as a miscarriage and will never have a birth certificate,” reads the description on her Change.org campaign. Sarah is asking for the rules to be changed and for the term ‘stillbirth’ to be used from 20 weeks onwards.

“Due to babies now being viable before 24 weeks, I would like the term stillbirth to be used from 20 weeks and birth certificates issued. “It’s so important to me that Rowan should have a birth certificate so she is registered as a member of our family for future generations.”

She has started a petition to appeal the ruling and has already received nearly 180,000 signatures of the 500,000 target. Another mum who has campaigned for the issue is Kym Marsh. The Coronation Street actress lost her son Archie in 2009 at 20 weeks and was angry when he wasn’t recognised as stillborn.

''It really annoyed me and it angered me. I had just given birth to a baby. I didn't miscarry my baby, I gave birth to him, and why is there no birth certificate?'' she told Digital Spy. "The clue is in the name, 'birth certificate'. So why? “Because he didn't survive? Because he wasn't 'viable'? What is that? When I'm not here anymore, no-one will know that my baby existed. And that's the thing that upsets a lot of women, where you can't have a birth certificate. “The fact I didn’t get a birth certificate for Archie means that when I’m gone there’s no record of him. “He won’t be on our family tree and yet I gave birth to him. We celebrate his birthday every year and let off balloons. “My daughter Polly knows she had a brother yet there is no record of his birth,” she said.