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The image in the top left corner is a Commemorative Birth Certificate. Pro-lifers have come up with yet another idea to force their religious beliefs on others, namely their unsubstantiated superstition that disembodied consciousnesses called souls enter and possess fertilised eggs at conception making them instantly completely equivalent to a fully grown adult. They want birth certificates issued to stillborn babies. The stillborns don’t get matching death certificates, so the wishful thinking is they live forever, creating a ID-theft nightmare. The mothers claim they want these certificates as sentimental keepsakes. That is not the function of a birth certificate. A birth certificate is an official primary lifetime ID and attestation to new life. It costs the government perhaps $100 to process. Stillborns don’t need ID. They don’t get inoculations, go to school, learn to drive etc. Keepsakes are a great idea, but the government should not be in the business of bronzing baby shoes. Surely religious groups can provide much more suitable keepsakes to aid parents over their grief. I don’t trust or believe those promoting this crazy idea. I think what they are really up to is trying to block abortions by legally defining 12 week olds as being legally already born, because they already have birth certificates, even before they leave the womb. Issuing birth certificates to the unborn is even more goofy and illogical than providing separate death certificates for individual limbs lost in war because a soldier wanted his loss honoured. The pro-lifers are unscrupulous holding up the mothers of stillborn children as emotional hostages in the abortion debate. Nobody wants to pile further emotional pain on parents who have gone through that, and nobody wants to give in to religious fruitcakes using those parents either. If such a birth certificate is ever issued, it should state that the baby was stillborn and that this certificate is not valid as ID for any living person. It would be foolish to create birth certificates ideal for criminal use out of sentimental or political motives.