Court action on right to bury foetus

A South African law that regards a foetus of 26 weeks – when it might have a 90% chance of survival if born – as medical waste could soon change. Laws preventing thousands of grieving people from burying stillborn babies and criminalising doctors who help them circumvent the law by signing death certificates, are to be challenged, says a TimesLIVE report. By law, foetuses born before 26 weeks of pregnancy are considered ‘medical waste’. The battle is being led by non-profit organisation The Voice of the Unborn Child. Other than acknowledging the organisation's letter in September requesting a meeting to discuss the protection of parents and their children's constitutional rights, the departments of Health, Home Affairs and Environmental Affairs have ignored Voice of the Unborn Child. The silence has forced the organisation's head, Sonja Smith, to approach the courts. Papers calling for the law's amendment are to be filed in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) soon. Smith's lawyer, Renaldi Ingram, said as the law stood, if doctors helped parents to bury their foetus under 26 weeks – by signing a death certificate – both would be ‘contravening the law’. 'The constitutional challenge is to amend current legislation to allow expecting parents, who suffer loss of pregnancy through either termination or miscarriage, to elect whether they want to bury or cremate the dead foetus or have the hospital dispose of it,' he said.

– TimesLIVE