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.
