Any hospital Named Christ Hospital shoud certainly maintain a better system to take care of stillborn babies.
The horror of this must be very devastating to the family.
The hospital should be reprimanded and put into place measures that this will never happen again.

Peggy Allred

Dr. Alvarez’s comments are completely reasonable and appropriate.

Unfortunately as long as our society continues to sanction the “right” for expectant mothers to choose to dispose of their unborn children much as one would dispose of trash, i.e. through elective abortion, it would seem counterintuitive to insist that hospitals and caregivers would treat a stillborn infant (or recently deceased newborn) with much dignity. How could a hospital worker know the difference between a recently deceased preemie whose parents were deeply mourning his or her death and “fetal tissue” that was unwanted?

Until the law regards the unborn and newly born as human who is to expect anyone else to?

Arguably caregivers and hospitals should be more sensitive and compassionate when dealing with a grieving family of a deceased newborn/ stillborn child. However at least to me I would find it difficult to comfort a grieving mother of a deceased newborn knowing that possibly in the same hospital perfectly healthy babies- perhaps of the same gestational age- are being aborted for convenience’s sake.

Should we not regard ALL human life with a bit more esteem? Should we not be able to offer comfort to the grieving in accordance to the depth and pain of their grief but also in deference to the dignity of the one they grieve?

I agree with Dr. Manny. A baby is always a human being whether or not it is born alive. This poor mother has been denied the basic right to grieve for her lost child. She will never have any closure. As a mother to two children, I can’t imagine the callousness that would lead a hospital to treat any human remains with such disregard. My heart goes out to this poor mother. I hope she has a good lawyer – I surely would be calling one if it were me.

It makes me sick when people say that a fetus is not a living being. Babies born at 23 weeks have lived healthy normal lives. For a hospital to consider a stillborn baby to be something to throw in the trash is disgusting! Even a spontaneously aborted fetus is a child in the eyes of an expectant mother. The family has every right to name, bury and mourn that baby. This country is too obsessed with death – why not err on the side of life, think positively, and look at life as a blessing and not a curse!

Why in the world would a hospital be required to take care of a dead baby’s body? At so many places around this country dead babies are routinely thrown in the trash or the biomedical waste bin-they are nothing more than “products of conception.” Since this is the accepted way of thinking, perhaps a patient would need to specify that they wanted to keep their product as opposed to the regular procedure. This whole situation breaks my heart.

This sort of thing should be no surprise to people. The abortion rights activists have made baby corpses nothing more then “trash” and Im surprised there arent more of these sort of events as a result. Life has been cheapened and its getting cheaper everyday.

February 1, 1990, I gave birth to a full term stillborn baby boy. Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch was very caring to my husband and me. Although I did not hold him since I was scared to hold a dead child – something I have regretted ever since, I remember vividly my little angel who was held by a kind nurse. Pictures of my son were taken so I could always remember his face. I have one of them framed and displayed on my dresser so I can look at him often. After giving birth I was moved to a different floor so I would not be near new mothers and their babies. I appreciated that immensely. It saddens me to hear that some women and their families do not receive the same respect that we were given.

One never really get over the loss of a baby. It is something that is with us for life. Although I had a healthy baby boy 20 months afterwards, my first son has and will never been forgotten. I pray this woman finds peace.

It is a sad story that we can heard every now and then, even the real mother do it to her child I know that the mother as a reason..I believe that everything we do has a a big reasons.

I experienced the loss of my first child due to still birth, and while the hospital was somewhat supportive, there was definitely room for improvement. It was discovered that my daughter had died the day after my due date, and I was refused a cesarean. I was told that induction was an option, but that my labor would be allowed to progress at its own pace… which could take up to 3 days. Basically, I was told that I would have to wait for my body to expel my still born baby at its own pace. This is an excruciatingly barbaric practice, no? After 48 hours I could no longer bear the mental anguish, and I demanded that I be allowed to give birth and that my labor be aggressively induced. Hospital policy stipulated that the head obstetrician be the one to perform the delivery. I had never met her before, and she acted as though my request to be put out of my prolonged misery was a huge inconvenience for her. I was left wondering, if my case was so important that the department head be required to handle it, why wasn’t I enough of a priority to attend to in the first place?
When all was said and done, I was never given any real answer as to why my daughter died. “It happens,” they told me. “The good news is, you can try again.” Right… because I can just replace the baby I lost? Unacceptable.
The whole ordeal was horribly traumatic, and I would never wish it on my worst enemy. Reform is needed!

It still amazes me that even after you see and hold a child, people will still call it a fetus. It is no longer part of the woman’s body, therefore he/she is their own person. My children were named by month 6. I referred to them as “my child”. How dare the government decide for a woman whether she is a mother or not. I am disgusted by atomsphere of death that Roe v. Wade has caused. It has not helped women. It has harmed us. It has torn a nation apart. More importantly, these innocent children are the real victims. Choice doesn’t have to include murder. Find the woman’s child so that she may bury him and grieve- as his mother.

Dear Dr. Manny,

Thank you for taking the time to address the need for bereavement support protocols and respect for the lives of the children who are lost to stillbirth or neonatal death. As someone who supports parents after the death of a child due to stillbirth, or neonatal loss, I have learned that the range of support given to parents is wide and varied.

While many hospitals do have support protocols in place, that is not always a guarantee of proper emotional care or the delivery of resources and information for when the parents are discharged. A newly bereaved parent quite often experiences diminished abilities to process information and so their future outcome for a healthy resolution to their grief is potentially compromised under these terrible circumstances.

What has happened to this poor family in NJ is a tragedy that was preventable. To have to live through the loss of her child and compound that with this horror is too much to have to bear. To have their baby’s body misplaced or thrown out with the trash is something they will never get over.

I am sorry for the depth of their terrible loss, and hope there can be some healing for them.

Corinne O’Flynn
Executive Director
Rowan Tree Foundation

This hospital will learn this lesson the hard way when this poor family gets a 7+ figure court awarded verdict. I would argue that this is the mindset the medical profession gets when so many folks are rabidly Pro-Abortion…it’s only a still born baby…who cares right? No different than if she had aborted it right? My son was born 6 weeks premature and was in a NICU for 3 weeks after his birth. As a soldier I assure you that the hospital staff would have been in imminent mortal danger if my son died and they threw his little body out in the trash. Every single person involved in this should be fired. Additionally, my reading of the article is that the baby had an irregular heartbeat and was NOT stillborn as the Dr. states above: “Moore, who has a 5-year-old son, said at a news conference she was in and out of consciousness in the minutes after the 5-pound boy was born. But she says the baby was born alive and that she held him briefly before doctors spent more than 20 minutes trying to stabilize the baby’s heart rate before he died.” RE: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476684,00.html The good Doctor’s assistant needs to fact check his articles before posting it. I would also have the attorneys check for medical malfeasance. The hospital should of had NICU doctors and nurses on standby for this high-risk delivery. If they did not then I would go after them for medical malpractice as well…

-Michael

What do you expect from a culture that has killed and discarded millions of pre-born through surgical abortions. The staff probably thought it was another fetus to send to the dumpster. These are sick times because there is NO respect for life, born or unborn!

This society we live in is a “disposable society” everything in life can be thrown out, no different is human life(the aged, handicapped, unborn,marriages, ect.)is no different then trash instead of revered and respect. In this story we see a perfect picture how depraved our society has come and yet we still refuse to think of it like that but are persistent to keep doing things the same way…something needs to change. This is absolutely horrendous and yet it just another form of what has been happening for years. We are out of control and we are about to hit rock bottom. We need PEOPLE and to say or think we don’t is a lie that will prove itself wrong. Time will only tell how messed up this thinking will cause our ultimate collapse!

This is total neglect on the part of the hospital staff and should be prosecuted. Stillborn babies deserve a proper burial to promote healthy greiving for the family. Many people believe that a fetus has a soul and it is not the hospital’s right to decide that a fetus is trash. This is a life that will never be forgotten, and always mourned.

When I heard this on the radio this morning I just wanted to cry. I had a stillborn baby that was 3 days away from birth. If this would have happened to me I think I would have gone crazy. It is the most unimaginable pain to lose your child, your hopes and dreams – something you were planning for for 9 months… then for a hospital to toss it out or lose it? That is just horrible. I feel for this family. No one really realizes the pain of losing a child at birth. It is sad that society does not view it as a “person” – what did they think was kicking around all those months… This article was really well written… I wish social services in these hospitals would provide better grief counseling for these mothers.

I am truly sickened by this story and think it is unbelievable that the end of this sweet baby’s life was not taken more seriously by the hospital. That being said, I think it is unfair that the anti-abortion nuts who are commenting here have apparently decided that people who believe in a woman’s right to choose whether she has a child also believe that it is ok to throw out a body with the trash. I firmly believe most of us who are pro-choice are against abortion after the first trimester and certainly against disregarding human decency and respect for a grieving family by not taking tender care of a tiny baby who did not live to enjoy a mother’s love. You cannot equate a baby who was apparently wanted and born at or close to full term with an unwanted pregnancy a woman decides not to go through within the first 3 months. Even though I have a 16 month old daughter who has completed my life, I would never dream of telling an unprepared woman to give birth to an unwanted child. I am far more sickened by the stories of abuse, neglect and even murder of unwanted children than I am of legal abortion. I actually believe even more in a woman’s right to choose now that I have a child.

I had a still born child in 1961. I didn’t know or was I told that I could have buried my child.
I was told that we had to pay for disposal.

They didn’t even tell me if my baby was a boy or girl and been worrying about it since that time.

Hospitals don’t for some reason tell you that you can have a service for you child even if its not full term.

I think I read in the article that NJ does not consider a stillborn child as a person. My question here is, was the baby actually stillborn as thehospital indicates, or was the child alive at birth and died very shortly thereafter; there seems to be some question and discrepancy. The other thing I ask is if the child was alive in-utero. Many laws will convict someone of fetal murder if a fetus is a certain age. So how can NJ say a stillborn is not a person when in fact a viable fetus is considered a “person?” I know I have seen stories of similar incidents and I ask the same question..how can a hospital be so incompetent?

This is very upsetting. I gave birth to my first child which was full term and she was stillborn.
That hospital owes that family there is no excuse for that. Although the hospital that I had my
daughter could have been a little better about taking care of me I had her at 9:00 a.m. and was released the same day at 5:00 p.m. That was in 1997. That was still a human being and they need to find that baby. I got to hold my baby and my family and friends did also and have graveside services for it. All your dreams and hopes are gone and there is not a day that don’t go by that I wonder what she would be like.
There is no replacement yeah you can have more kids but nothing takes the place of that child there is no replacement. I also heard the saying you can have more kids but that doesn’t help.
People don’t understand until that has happened to them.

My sister lost her baby the day after birth. The picture lady came to her room to take a picture of the newborn. A nurse came to check on my sister asking how the baby was. They put a mother and baby in the same room with my sister while she was recovering. At her six week check, the doctor asked how was the mother and baby doing. Hospitals need to do a better job of flagging charts so this type of insensitivity never happens!!!

Christ Hospital was once the best hospital in Hudon County, New Jersey. However, it has become the a hospital that has declined to do poor management . Fire the President Of Christ Hospital !

It is horrible that this baby is missing, but why did it take so long for the funeral home to get the deceased baby? By my count it was 10 days? Did this woman think the hospital was going to hang on to this dead body indefinitely? I am not trying to justify what the hospital did but maybe the hospital wasn’t given any indication someone was coming for the baby. Someone may have thought that the dead baby was abandoned and they disposed of it. I don’t know, this whole thing sounds screwy from the get go.

I completely agree with the article by Dr. Alvarez and as a mother of a child who was born still. The bottom line is that he was still born and he is STILL a member of our family.
The days of hospitals and doctors hiding the babies from us for “our health” are over. These are children that we wanted, love and miss everyday of our lives. We are the moms who had prenatal care, and took every precaution to protect our children.
The I know of moms who still mourn their children after 40 years.
I was able to hold and love my son for 12 hours and had beautiful pics taken by Now I lay me down to sleep.
How can my son not be considered a person when I could feel him kick, hiccup and move?
If my son is not considered to be a person then why does the law require burial or cremation?
If my son was not considered a person then why did over 100 people come to say goodbye to our son at his funeral?
If my son was not considered a person then my is our families heart broken?
The laws need to be changed and the hospitals need to understand a parents grief is the worst. Don’t understand it? Imagine you in the shoes.

In a country that supports late term abortions (or any for that matter), this incident does not surprise me at all. The babies don’t look any different whether they are wanted or not. Whoever discarded the body probably thought this was just an aborted “fetus” and not somebody’s beloved baby boy.

Thank you for recognizing the fact that even if a baby is stillborn it is still a human being. I lost my first son at 29 weeks gestation, he was stillborn. Perfect in every shape and form, just not a beating heart at delivery. The pain never goes away, the memories never fade, and the love only grows.