When she was pregnant with her son, Nicole Spadea Jackson would sit at night with her oldest daughter and quietly imagine what Max would look like and sound like when he came into the world.

"My daughter had all kinds of plans for him," Jackson said.

But on Dec. 28, just one week before Max's expected birth, the unthinkable happened.

Doctors could not find Max's heartbeat.

"I had had a healthy pregnancy the whole time," recalled Jackson, 31, who lives with her husband, Thomas, on Wabank Road in Millersville. "I had been at the doctor's the previous Monday and his heartbeat was fine. Everything was normal."

At 39 weeks, Jackson was told Max would be stillborn. His umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck three times and become knotted.

The delivery was a somber event.

"Usually, when a baby's born, everybody cries. When Max was born, it was silent," Jackson said. "Nobody said anything."

Adding more emotional pain to the Jackson family's loss, though, was the small notice that arrived in the mail a short time later.

It was not an acknowledgment of birth, but a fetal death certificate from Pennsylvania's Department of Health.

"It's like Max disappeared," Jackson said.

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Pennsylvania is among about two dozen states that don't issue birth certificates for stillborn babies — a practice parents here and across the state have been fighting to change for nearly a decade.

To them, the issue comes down to a seemingly simple question: How can you record a death without first acknowledging a birth?

"I was pregnant for 41 weeks. I was in labor for 21 hours. I had this beautiful little girl and I came home with absolutely nothing to show for it," said Stephanie Cole, whose daughter, Madeline Jonna, was stillborn in 2007.

"It would have been nice to know she was recognized as a person," said Cole, 27, who lives in Lancaster with her husband, Richard, and has advocated for the change on her Web site sweetpeaproject.org.

Issuing a birth certificate to parents of stillborn babies is seemingly a non-controversial procedure for the 27 other states that do it.

And yet roadblocks exist here.

"It's frustrating, is what it is," said Kim Kashar of Manheim Township, who joined the fight to change Pennsylvania's law after her daughter, Baylee Serene, was stillborn in 2001.

Kashar has begun to withdraw from the effort because the legislation, year after year, has gone nowhere.

"We came in as amateurs. We came in as parents fighting for their children," Kashar said. "We got thrown into a lot of political stuff we weren't ready for."

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Republican Sen. Jake Corman of Centre County has introduced a bill that would give parents of stillborn babies what they are looking for: a "certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth."

It is his second attempt in as many years. The previous bill stalled in the House.

The new bill was referred to the Senate Public Health & Welfare Committee in March 2009, where it has sat for the last year.

"There is some concern that it gets into abortion law," Corman said in an interview, "that somehow a judge can take this bill and define life at an earlier age, which is ridiculous."

To illustrate the point, there have been legislative battles over specific words in the bill — specifically over whether it applies to "a stillborn child" or "a stillborn fetus."

Abortion rights advocates in the Legislature worry that a woman's right to have an abortion could be undermined — a concern Corman says is unfounded.

"This is not a mandated certificate," Corman said. "It has absolutely nothing to do with defining when life begins. Unfortunately, with the issue of abortion, people get hysterical and don't listen to facts."

Republican Sen. Pat Vance of Cumberland County, chairwoman of the Senate Health & Welfare committee, could not immediately be reached for comment.

State Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat from Lancaster who helped a similar bill get to the floor in the early 2000s, said the earlier proposal got caught up in a number of technical problems, too.

"There were a whole lot of issues there. Was there an actual birth? Was there a Social Security number? Were there insurance liabilities?" he said.

"I got to a point where I said, 'Here's what the administration is willing to live with, and here's what can get passed.' Some of the supporters of the bill said, 'Good, I appreciate that.' Others said, 'No, unless it says this, you're not doing your job.' "

That proposal would have allowed the state to issue a "certificate of stillbirth." Years later, such a bill did pass. Those documents are available to parents of stillborn babies.

But they are of no consolation.

"A certificate of stillbirth," Jackson said, "is just a death certificate."

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What are the prospect's of Corman's bill passing before the Legislature's two-year session ends in November?

"I'm always optimistic," Corman said. "I think we can still get it through the Senate. But the same leadership is in the House. My guess is they haven't changed their opinion."

Advocates such as Jackson, however, continue to fight for the cause — in her case, for a 7 pound, 1 ounce boy named Max who didn't make it.

"Instead of crying every day, I feel like I'm doing something for my son," Jackson said. "He's the driving force behind this."

tmurse@lnpnews.com