Communal Burial Service

I am grateful to George J. Gatt, president of the Stillbirth and Neo-natal Death Society, Malta (The Sunday Times, July 24), for informing readers about their activities, and for confirming that this Communal Burial Service is a lay initiative and not a Vatican-inspired, official, universally observed Roman Catholic Church service.

He seems unaware, however, that our Pathology Department and the Attorney General's office have had some say in this. The Pathology Department has custody of these foetuses and stillbirths until it receives instruction as to their burial.

Furthermore, burials are not only a Church affair but are also a State law responsibility. One of my senior Pathology colleagues has correspondence from the Attorney General, dating back several years, in which he states that the distinction between a foetus and a stillbirth will not be made by his office but should be left to doctors to determine.

This may be related to the legal requirement for a burial certificate for a stillbirth but not for a foetus, the latter being considered not to have had the capacity of life outside its mother's womb if under a certain gestation age.

Mr Gatt further states that foetuses are persons. That foetuses that have been naturally aborted and are too immature to live outside their mother's womb should be legally considered persons is, to my mind, arguable.

I stand to be corrected, but I think the State keeps a record of stillbirths but not of foetuses, and the State has a responsibility of keeping a record of all the persons who form part of it.