New Zealand approves new bill giving parents paid bereavement leave after a miscarriage or stillbirth
Aneira Davies
ContributorThe new legislation will apply to parents who lose a baby at any stage of their pregnancy. Could the UK follow suit?
Parents in New Zealand will now be able to take bereavement leave after a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The New Zealand parliament unanimously voted to give mothers and fathers three days of paid leave after a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The new legislation will apply to couples who lose a baby at any stage of their pregnancy and includes parents planning to have a child through adoption or surrogacy too. However, it does not apply to women who end a pregnancy through abortion.
Labour MP Ginny Andersen presented the bill and said it would ‘give people time to grieve and promotes greater openness about miscarriage’.
She said: ‘The grief that comes with miscarriage is not a sickness; it is a loss.
‘That loss takes time – time to recover physically and time to recover mentally; time to recover with a partner.’
The MP also added: ‘Miscarriage is so often not talked about. It is left in the shadows.’
‘At a time when a woman is dealing with the physical and the emotional loss that comes with the unexpected loss of a pregnancy, there is still stigma in New Zealand today around asking for help.’
Ginny went on to mention writer Kathryn Van Beek, who approached her local MP after experiencing a miscarriage and pushed for a law change, quoting her words: ‘It is still seen as the strange secret birth that is also a death.’
Other countries have brought in similar measures for parents after a miscarriage.
Indian women are entitled to six weeks’ leave after a miscarriage, while, in Ontario in Canada, a woman who loses her baby 17 weeks or less before her due date is entitled to 17 weeks of unpaid pregnancy leave.
In the UK, miscarriages that happen before the 24th week of pregnancy are not eligible for bereavement leave, however if a mother has a stillborn baby after this date, she will be entitled to both maternity leave and its associated pay.
Would you like to see similar leave brought in in the UK? Share your thoughts below.
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