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Max's and Katie's birth certificates are being held hostage by the State of Wisconsin.
Until their mother, Judith Strand, agrees to answer personal lifestyle questions attached to the official birth certificate applications, the state will not issue the legal documents.
Strand, of Madison, has refused. The twins are 3 years old.
"The thing that started pushing my buttons was when they started asking about education and employment and how many times you terminated your pregnancy," Strand said.
"They asked did you smoke? How many cigarettes per day? What was your alcohol use per day?
"And I know enough to realize this is important health information to try and correlate with births of children. But I thought this was very inappropriate to be part of the sheet that I needed to fill out to get my children's birth certificate.
"I said, `If you want to give this to me in an anonymous format, I'm more than willing to fill this out.' I wrote `Not appropriate' on it, signed everything else and handed it to the hospital person. They went nuts.'"
State officials said all new mothers are required to answer the confidential questions that are on the same form used to apply for birth certificates. The information is entered into a state computer that sends it on to the National Center for Health Statistics for research.
While the confidential data sent along for national research is anonymous, the same data continue to be stored in state computers with the mother's name attached. Research data have been gathered on birth...