{"id":138403,"date":"2025-07-08T17:17:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T21:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=138403"},"modified":"2025-07-08T17:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T21:53:31","slug":"church-times-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=138403","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) The House of Lords debates the definition of stillbirth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/bishop-of-guildford\">Bishop of Guildford<\/a>, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, spoke in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/house-of-lords\">House of Lords<\/a>\u00a0last week in support of a change to the legal definition of a stillbirth: from a death after 24 weeks into pregnancy to a death after 20 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, the death of a baby before 24 weeks is considered to be a miscarriage, with implications for entitlement to bereavement leave and maternity protection, as the baby is not legally considered a person (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2019\/11-october\/features\/features\/baby-loss-pray-you-love-remember\">Features, 11 October 2019<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bishop Watson was speaking on the Lords Bill introduced by Baroness Benjamin (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/liberal-democrats\">Liberal Democrat<\/a>). It seeks to lower the threshold for a death to be considered a stillbirth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cUp to 10,000 families in the UK lose their babies between 20 and 24 weeks of pregnancy,\u201d Baroness Benjamin said in the debate last Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/11-july\/news\/uk\/lords-debate-definition-of-stillbirth\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Losing a baby in pregnancy through <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/miscarriage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#miscarriage<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/stillbirth?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#stillbirth<\/a> is still a taboo subject worldwide, linked to stigma and shame.<br>Many women still do not receive appropriate and respectful care when their baby dies during pregnancy or childbirth <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/IbTh4YC8oo\">https:\/\/t.co\/IbTh4YC8oo<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/x7HQ253ygj\">pic.twitter.com\/x7HQ253ygj<\/a><\/p>&mdash; World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WHO\/status\/1105895560781942784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 13, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, spoke in the\u00a0House of Lords\u00a0last week in support of a change to the legal definition of a stillbirth: from a death after 24 weeks into pregnancy to a death after 20<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=138403\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,389,635,438,199,114,96,98,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-church-of-england-coe","category-coe-bishops","category-death-burial-funerals","category-england-uk","category-law-legal-issues","category-life-ethics","category-marriage-family","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138403"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138407,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138403\/revisions\/138407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}