My brother's wife had a stillborn son. The feedback I got was they were upset I wouldn't make the 4 hour trip to his funeral. In hindsight I kind of regret not doing it. We were never close and I was waking up from Mormonism. I didn't feel like attending a funeral to support a somewhat estranged brother. I would have been the only family there.

They did have another funeral where the child was buried and many of my siblings and also my parents attended it. This funeral close to me was just for the people where my brother was going to med school.

Our mother had had a stillborn back in the late 1970s. I knew that this child's temple work couldn't be done. It was one of the few things to disappoint my mother about her church. Her daughter has a headstone we religiously visited every Memorial Day when I was growing up.

For me I never understood the policy. After "losing my testimony" it compounded the stupidity of this policy. For Mormonism, "the breath of life" must indicate a soul or something for them and their bizarre dead processing.

"There are specific guidelines concerning stillborn children. [7.4.2]
No temple ordinances are performed for stillborn children (those who are considered dead at the time of birth). They may be listed, however, in family records (the child may be listed simply as “Stillborn”)."
https://www.lds.org/manual/introduction-to-family-history-student-manual/chapter-7?lang=eng


Because the stillborn child is a thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/09/stillbirths-very-private-grief-parents-breaking-taboo

Actually it is a really big thing and I have been unaware of how big it is for a long time even though in my childhood I witnesses the magnitude of it.

"Although these issues were all addressed during the crisis intervention period, it is suggested that owing to the severe emotional ramifications of stillbirth, long-term emotions persist and not one of the participants were symptom/grief-free six months later. Primary reasons for not wanting to fall pregnant again, as indicated by participants, include that they did not feel themselves strong enough to go through another loss and to relive all the emotions of fear, anger, denial, guilt and worthlessness."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4299465/

I visited my parents for Thanksgiving and my father spoke of my stillborn sister still as if she were a fully fledged member of my family.

Shame on The Mormon Church for not considering a child who once lived in a womb as a person. Shame on me for not understanding merely because I never had it happen to me.

So are the GAs non-persons just because they’re brain dead?

I don't think so. Just because they breath and have breathed.

I don't understand their rationale because there is no doctrine to explain it. But that is how it goes with them. Policy is revelatory and needs no explanation, apology, or justifications.

The stillborn child is alive inside the womb until its heart stops beating.

I don't understand the difference either. If life begins at conception ie, isn't that what Mormonism teaches?

Catholicism does.

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't understand the difference either.

Mormons don't either. All they got is this. If you read the link you will find a sad story where the woman is told that her and her husband's inspiration to have another child that would eventually die in her womb was a test from God.

“When a couple have a stillborn child, we give them all the comfort we can. We have good reasons to hope. Funeral services may be held for such children, if the parents so desire. Stillborn children should not be reported nor recorded as births and deaths on the records of the Church, but it is suggested that parents record in their own family records a name for each such stillborn child.”
President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972), Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. (1954–56), 2:280.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2006/02/our-stillborn-baby?lang=eng

Horrible policy.

Doesn't that give credence to the false notion that life doesn't begin until the infant breathes outside of the womb?

The church has and continues to be pro-life, but their policy doesn't embrace that idea.

The local church leaders aren't even aware of these policies sometimes.

"Individuals with mental disabilities may have all ordinances performed for them. [7.4.5]
All temple ordinances may be performed for individuals with mental disabilities if they died when they were eight years of age or older. If they died before age eight, only the ordinance of sealing to parents is needed."
https://www.lds.org/manual/introduction-to-family-history-student-manual/chapter-7?lang=eng


"Our son passed away at 22, but was listed on his church record as non-accountable, since he was profoundly handicapped. We recieved contradictory guidance as to doing his temple work, so one day at the temple asked to speak to a member of the temple presidency about it. After hearing of our situation, his words were that performing proxy work for those for whom no baptism was required, like our son, would be mockery of the promises God has made of those who do not need baptism. He had been born in the covenant, and that also negated the need for a proxy endowment. That kind of settled it for us."
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/57904-temple-work-for-still-borns/


And on top this idiocy, the real pain, grief and suffering parents and family feel when their stillborn is recognized as themselves as a member of their family but not in their church really does damage.


They will rebaptize Rulon Jeffs (my grandfather) and re-seal him to my grandmother who divorced him before WWII as what appears to be a plural wife yet my stillborn sister appear on no records because she didn't take one breath in life.

They insult their living and the dead because they have all these policies with no doctrines or revelations backing them.

They just are...continuing revelation that The Mormon Church is just a fickle and fraudulent social network that doesn't invest as much in people as it does in real-estate, stocks, and other marginally religious things for them like genealogy.