July/August 2014 – In Oklahoma’s Perinatal Hospice Bill, passed in April, when parents learn of fetal anomalies in their unborn child, they will be informed of every resource available to rescue or ease life for their child. Abortion providers will also be required to notify women that they may seek perinatal hospice care instead of abortion in these cases.
“Perinatal hospice services provide support from the time of diagnosis through the infant’s birth and death,” as the Associated Press reported. “Those services can include obstetricians, neonatologists, psychiatrists or other mental health professionals as well as clergy, social workers and specialty nurses.”
If a baby does not survive after birth, the privacy of parents’ last moments with the child while he or she lives will be carefully protected, and counseling will follow to aid the healing process for the grieving parents.
