My semi-regular review of what Rep. Hostettler is up to via Plogress (can’t recommend that site enough.) revealed this slightly creepy child tax credit:
A child born within 9 months after the close of the taxable year shall be treated as a qualifying child for such taxable year.
A child who is stillborn or dies in utero, whose death was not the result of a medical procedure, the ingestion of a drug, or other action intended by the child’s mother to result in the abortion of the child, shall be treated as a qualifying child for the taxable year in which the child dies.
So, you’d get a tax credit for a clump of cells that spontaneously terminates. (This is about 10% of all pregnancies — I suspect with this tax incentive, that percentage would spike.)
Those who think humans are no better than the blastocysts we came from are certainly persistent. Now, if they could only be bothered to care about life during the period after birth and before brain death.
My son died right before he was born – seconds before. This child tax credit should be extended to people in this situation. Maybe not at any point in a pregnancy, but when it’s far enough along that you are paying funeral expenses and hospital bills and have to go into counseling, yeah, it would be helpful.