Breaking the Silence: An Agenda for a Feminist Discourse of Pregnancy Loss

Finding the positive in loss: stillbirth and its potential for parental empowerment

“…This recognition of the seriousness of the loss by the medical profession has not necessarily been mirrored by the general population, though, with many parents feeling that their social circle does not recognise their loss (Rajan andOakley, 1997, author, unpublished PhD thesis, 2009) and, for first-time mothers and fathers, they feel that they are not categorised as parents by their friends and family (author, forthcoming;. Layne (1997), too, has also talked about the silences that surround pregnancy loss and Hazen (2006) has noted how women would silence themselves following a loss. The sociologist Deborah Davidson (2011) recounts, in an examination of her own experience of perinatal loss in the 1970s, of not mentioning her losses for fear of upsetting her social circle.…”

“…In these ways, by continuing to include the stillborn child in their families, parents are breaking the silence of pregnancy loss that Layne (1997) referred to. A further way of doing this, one recounted by many interviewees, was by participating in awarenessraising events organised by their local branches of Sands such as balloon-raising, charity fund-raising and memorial gardens: this activity might go on for several years after the stillbirth.…”

The Value of Pregnancy and the Meaning of Pregnancy Loss

“…The fear in the context of pregnancy loss is that if one were to acknowledge that there was something of value lost, something worth grieving in a miscarriage, one would thereby automatically accede the inherent personhood of embryos/fetuses. 16 Whatever the explanation, one is tempted to wonder why we would ever value a fetus or grieve pregnancy loss after considering arguments defending abortion. 17 If our goal is to defend reproductive autonomy, and we take this to involve defending a woman's "right to choose," we need to take seriously the choices available.…”

Marginal matters: Pregnancy loss as a social event

“…Furthermore, there is a common agreement that the chances of spontaneously aborting a pregnancy increase with age and that one loss increases the risk of losing subsequent pregnancies. Thus, especially when carrying multiple pregnancies during a life course, women are very likely to experience some form of loss at least once in their reproductive trajectories (Layne, 1997;Letherby, 1993;London, 2004).…”