Florida women can now honor children lost to miscarriage thanks to a bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.
The new law, called the Grieving Families Act, allows parents to request a birth certificate for pregnancies that end between nine and twenty weeks. They can even have the miscarried child’s names printed on the certificate.
Pregnancies that end after twenty weeks are considered stillbirths, for which a death certificate is issued. But the law will allow parents to get birth certificates in those cases, but the certificate will indicate that it was not a live birth.
Florida is the first state to issue birth certificates to parents whose child does not make it full term.