Bereavement leave to be expanded to parents of babies pre-abortion limit

Parents in Great Britain who lose a baby before 24 weeks will be eligible for bereavement leave, under new proposals.

The Government is set to amend its Employment Rights Bill to provide at least one week of unpaid leave, with details to be finalised following consultation. Currently, parents who have a miscarriage can only take two weeks’ bereavement leave and statutory pay if the baby dies after the 24-week abortion limit.

It stands in stark contrast to the vote last month to further liberalise abortion law to allow women to kill their unborn child at any stage of pregnancy without sanction.

‘Traumatic’

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner stated: “No one who is going through the heartbreak of pregnancy loss should have to go back to work before they are ready”.

Broadcaster and musician Myleene Klass, who was awarded an MBE for miscarriage awareness, said the proposals should stop bereaved parents from being forced to take sick leave, emphasising, “you’re not ill, you’ve lost a child, there’s a death in the family”.

She told the BBC: “It’s a taboo – nobody wants to talk about dead babies – but you have to actually say it as it is. To lose a child is harrowing, it’s traumatic.”

Sarah Owen MP, who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, welcomed the plans as a “huge step forward to recognising that loss as a bereavement”, adding: “Nobody says ‘get well soon’ once you’ve had a miscarriage, they say ‘I’m really sorry for your loss’. It’s fantastic to see the law catch up with this.”

Baby loss

In the House of Lords, a Bill tabled by Baroness Floella Benjamin to change the definition of stillbirth so that it applies to any unborn baby which dies after 20 weeks has passed its Second Reading. This would “extend all rights and benefits that currently exist” to mothers who lose a baby after 24 weeks, such as bereavement leave and maternity protections, to pregnancies lost after 20.

Currently, the law defines babies lost after 24 weeks as stillbirths, and those before as miscarriages.

In the debate, Baroness Benjamin told fellow Peers: “I am asking us to redefine compassion, to recognise humanity for every baby lost from 20 weeks onwards.”

Minister Baroness Wheeler said the Government did not support the new definition, as it would create an inconsistency with the law on abortion, by recognising that life begins before 24 weeks.

Recognition of life

Last year, more parents in England who lost their baby due to a miscarriage became eligible for a Baby Loss Certificate.

The certificates were introduced following a Pregnancy Loss Review by the Department of Health and Social Care, as one of the recommendations to provide people with better care.

Initially only available to those who had lost a child since September 2018, the cut-off date has now been removed.