Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

In 1988 the month of October was officially designated “National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month” by President Reagan. I was 7 years-old, with no idea that one day the speech he gave on that day would be so meaningful to me. I’d love for you to take a minute to read his Presidential Proclamation as an introduction to this topic. I love how he says, “. . . increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn and newborn babies.” This is beautifully validating language that acknowledges the life that was lost even at the earliest stages of pregnancy.

Throughout the month we will be reading stories from women who have lost babies either through miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, stillbirth, or infant death. It’s a hard topic to embrace, but I think it’s incredibly important to realize that even a miscarriage isn’t “just” a miscarriage. The death of a child is always incredibly personal and painful, no matter how long or short the life of that child was. The more we can understand and validate the pain of those around us who have lost children, the more we can help them carry that grief and hopefully lessen the isolation and loneliness it may cause them to feel.

October 25, 1988

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Each year, approximately a million pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of the newborn child. National observance of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, 1988, offers us the opportunity to increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn and newborn babies. It also enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members and work to prevent causes of these problems.

Health care professionals recognize that trends of recent years, such as smaller family size and the postponement of childbearing, adds another dimension of poignance to the grief of parents who have lost infants. More than 700 local, national, and international support groups are supplying programs and strategies designed to help parents cope with their loss. Parents who have suffered their own losses, health care professionals, and specially trained hospital staff members are helping newly bereaved parents deal constructively with loss.

Compassionate Americans are also assisting women who suffer bereavement, guilt, and emotional and physical trauma that accompany post-abortion syndrome. We can and must do a much better job of encouraging adoption as an alternative to abortion; of helping the single parents who wish to raise their babies; and of offering friendship and temporal support to the courageous women and girls who give their children the gifts of life and loving adoptive parents. We can be truly grateful for the devotion and concern provided by all of these citizens, and we should offer them our cooperation and support as well.

The Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 314, has designated the month of October 1988 as “Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month” and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this month.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of October 1988 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirteenth.

Ronald Reagan