It wasn’t always this way—and because of our culture of secrecy, many of us believe that miscarriage is uncommon.
Why Is There So Much Silence Around Miscarriage?
For as long as I’ve been researching, thinking, and writing about miscarriage, I’ve been aware of a strident trifecta that accompanies the topic: silence, stigma, and shame. These three concepts are responsible for so many of the challenges pregnant people face when it comes to pregnancy and infant loss. They work in concert at nearly all times, obstructing conversations and connection around this all-too-common topic, and isolating those who experience it. While they’re inextricably linked, they are part of a vicious cycle that actually has a starting point. And culturally speaking, a relatively recent one at that.
In the Western world, until the twentieth century, we actually weren’t nearly as hesitant to talk about the experience as we are today. For one thing, at a time when methods of birth control were virtually nonexistent, and abortion was illegal and therefore dangerous, some women welcomed miscarriage as a relief—financially, physically—from carrying and caring for more children. There was no reason not to put voice to that feeling. It was described in articles in the 1800s as a blessing, nature doing its job. But miscarriage and pregnancy loss could also be very dangerous for women; infection and even death were possible outcomes. It was imperative to not stay silent, lest you jeopardize your own life.
There have been glimpses of this more vocal approach in recent decades, like in the 1970s, when the modern wellness trend was really born, and miscarriage became a public health issue. Women began demanding answers when they noticed pregnancy losses corresponding with safety issues like pesticide use and hazardous living conditions. We were shouting, begging to be noticed and taken seriously. But by and large, silence has been the norm. Especially as the twentieth century drew to a close, and access to safe, legal abortion care became constitutional law due to the passage of Roe v. Wade and birth control became more attainable than it had ever been before, things started changing. The prevailing narrative, especially among white, middle- and upper-class women, became that, essentially, all “kept” pregnancies are wanted pregnancies.
Advances in modern medicine have also been both a help and a hindrance. We can now know we are pregnant sooner than ever: tests can catch a pregnancy days before a missed period, and at just six weeks, before women may even know they’re pregnant, fetal heart tones—more commonly known as the “heartbeat”—can be detected. Advances in sonography and the introduction of 3-D ultrasounds magnify fetuses so they appear as large, and as fully formed, as infants. And so, the gestational lengths of our pregnancies rarely dictate our emotional response to them—for so many of us, they seem real the moment they begin and the connection only strengthens from there. And while the medical gains of these scientific feats cannot be understated, they have both expanded and complicated our collective reaction to pregnancy loss. Instead of being a blessing or a medical necessity, a public-health concern or a consequence of a past misdeed, miscarriage is now often associated with just one word: “grief.” And for the generations that came before us, grief was often considered a private emotion. Our mothers and grandmothers didn’t grow up in a culture where openness and dialogue about pregnancy and infant loss was encouraged, and they lost the language to pass along to us.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Jessica Zucker
