Childhood Studies Miscarriage
by
Lara Freidenfelds
  • LAST REVIEWED: 21 January 2016
  • LAST MODIFIED: 21 January 2016
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0104

Introduction

Miscarriage is medically defined as a pregnancy loss in approximately the first half of pregnancy (twenty weeks or so), before viability. Historically and popularly, and presently in many non-Western societies, nonviable births up to approximately seven months (thirty weeks) have often been named as miscarriages. Only since the 20th century, and particularly in highly developed countries with low birth rates, have these pregnancy losses been widely regarded as the loss of a baby, rather than as a different kind of loss. This change in meaning of the miscarried embryo or fetus is the result of a broad swath of social, medical, and technological changes, including the rise of prenatal care early in pregnancy; the widespread use of new technologies, such as obstetric ultrasound, home pregnancy tests, and in vitro fertilization (IVF); abortion debates, first in the late 19th century and again in the late 20th century; the rise of contraceptive technology and belief in family limitation and the resulting drop in the birth rate in the 19th and 20th centuries; the reduction of infant and child mortality in the 19th and 20th centuries; the continuous expansion of parenting expectations and responsibilities since the late 18th century; increasing marketplace consumption on behalf of children, babies, and expected babies; the increasing age of mothers at first birth; and the lowering of age of viability with technologically sophisticated neonatal medical care. Much has been written about medical, public health, and psychological aspects of miscarriage. Researchers have considered the causes of miscarriage, how to prevent miscarriage, how to medically and psychologically manage a miscarriage in progress, and the physical and psychological sequelae of miscarriage. Works focusing specifically on miscarriage in the social science and humanities literature are strong but sparse, and much research remains to be done. Historians have examined aspects of miscarriage in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, and anthropologists have researched experiences of miscarriages across several cultures.

Historical Perspectives on Miscarriage

Scholars have begun to document the changing representations and experiences of miscarriage over the past several centuries. Sources are thin for women’s experiences before the 1960s, so historical conclusions are necessarily fairly speculative, though well argued. Pollock 1990 argues that early modern pregnancies were routinely treated as in danger of miscarriage. Jackson 1996 looks at 18th-century British court records to document how women described pregnancy losses in defending themselves against infanticide charges. Withycombe 2010 examines 19th-century medical and personal perspectives. Kastor and Valencius 2008 argues from a close reading of sources from the Lewis and Clark expedition that Sacagawea was treated for a miscarriage en route. Reagan 2003 looks at popular press representations of miscarriage in the 20th-century United States.

  • Jackson, Mark. “‘Something More Than Blood’: Conflicting Accounts of Pregnancy Loss in Eighteenth-Century England.” In The Anthropology of Pregnancy Loss: Comparative Studies in Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death. Edited by Rosanne Cecil, 197–214. Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg, 1996.

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    A look at accounts of pregnancy loss by women defending themselves against infanticide charges in court. While the accounts cannot be taken at face value as reports of experience, they illuminate an 18th-century understanding of what miscarriages should look like and are understood to signify.

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  • Kastor, Peter J., and Conevery Bolton Valencius. “Sacagawea’s ‘Cold’: Pregnancy and the Written Record of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 276–310.

    DOI: 10.1353/bhm.0.0007Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Takes the reader through a close reading of sources from the Lewis and Clark expedition journals, showing how a now-cryptic series of entries about Sacagawea was probably intended to describe a miscarriage. Illuminates early-19th-century understandings and representations of reproduction, pregnancy, and the experience of pregnancy loss. Available online by subscription.

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  • Pollock, Linda A. “Embarking on a Rough Passage: The Experience of Pregnancy in Early-Modern Society.” In Women as Mothers in Pre-industrial England. Edited by Valerie Fildes, 39–67. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

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    See particularly pp. 49–59. Pollock argues that pregnancies were always seen as in danger of miscarrying, and this framed prenatal advice and practices. She also argues that some miscarriages were induced (i.e., abortions), and practitioners may have regarded early miscarriages as dangerous because they were difficult to differentiate from abortions.

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  • Reagan, Leslie J. “From Hazard to Blessing to Tragedy: Representations of Miscarriage in Twentieth-Century America.” Feminist Studies 9.2 (2003): 356–378.

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    Article based on thorough review of popular literature, characterizing shifting perspectives on the meaning of miscarriage as American social and political concerns changed. Available online by subscription.

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  • Withycombe, Shannon K. “Slipped Away: Pregnancy Loss in Nineteenth-Century America.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2010.

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    A well-organized, well-argued, and well-written doctoral thesis, examining physicians’ writings on miscarriage in the 19th century as well as the few obtainable women’s writings culled from intensive archival research. Contains findings not yet published in peer-reviewed form.

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  • Withycombe, Shannon K. “From Women’s Expectations to Scientific Specimens: The Fate of Miscarriage Materials in Nineteenth-Century America.” Social History of Medicine (2015)

    DOI: 10.1093/shm/hku071Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Illuminating, archive-based examination of how 19th-century women and their doctors handled miscarriages, interpreted the meaning of miscarried embryos and fetuses, and together shaped early embryology.

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Social History of Pregnancy

While historical sources focusing exclusively on miscarriage are sparse, many scholars have written more broadly about pregnancy, childbearing, and embryology. This writing sheds light on the contexts and meanings of pregnancy loss and tangentially discusses miscarriage. Dunstan 1990 collects essays on views of the embryo from ancient through early modern natural philosophical texts. Gelis 1991 describes beliefs and practices surrounding fertility and pregnancy in Early Modern Europe, with a focus on France. Duden 1991 gives a vivid picture of women’s experiences of their generative, menstruating, and pregnant bodies in Early Modern Europe. Making Visible Embryos examines visual representations of embryos from the Middle Ages to the present. Klepp 2009 shows the changing meanings of pregnancy and childbearing in the early American republic. Brodie 1994 describes the growth of contraception and abortion in the 19th-century United States, Mohr 1978 documents the new 19th-century legal regulation of abortion before quickening (perceived fetal movement), and Reagan 1997 examines women’s experiences of unwanted pregnancies in the century of criminalization of early abortion.

  • Brodie, Janet Farrell. Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

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    Meticulously detailed accounting of advice literature on contraception and abortion in 19th-century America, its authors, its distribution, and barriers to distribution.

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  • Duden, Barbara. The Woman beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

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    A close analysis of the prolific and detailed casebooks of Dr. Johannes Storch, who practiced in Eisenach, Germany, in the early 18th century. Illuminates the experience of living in a woman’s (reproductive) body in the Early Modern period, through women’s stories and symptoms as recorded by Storch. Gives a vivid sense of how these women experienced their bodies differently from modern women.

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  • Dunstan, G. R. The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1990.

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    Densely argued and substantiated essays describing natural philosophical approaches to the embryo from the ancient world through the Early Modern period.

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  • Gelis, Jacques. History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991.

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    A wide-ranging, lightly footnoted description of reproductive traditions in Early Modern Europe, focused on France.

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  • Klepp, Susan E. Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

    DOI: 10.5149/9780807838716_KleppSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Combines demographic and social history to show how the dramatic demographic shift toward smaller families between the late 18th and early 20th centuries in the United States was initiated by women beginning to think differently about their lives and their reproductive careers.

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  • Making Visible Embryos.

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    A well-organized website with lots of great visuals, describing and showing how embryos have been visually represented from the Middle Ages through the present.

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  • Mohr, James. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

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    A detailed accounting of state laws about abortion in the 19th century, demonstrating that early laws accounted for abortion only after quickening, and even midcentury laws were aimed at preventing women’s poisoning deaths caused by patent medicine. Only late in the century, at the prodding of the newly organized medical profession, did laws begin to target women and irregular medical practitioners for early abortions.

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  • Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

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    Largely through the lens of coroners’ reports, looks at women’s experiences of abortion during the century of its illegality; analyzes doctors’ practices in the provision of abortion and shifting law enforcement responses to abortion practices. Gives a complicated picture of abortion as an “open secret,” physicians as often sympathetic abortion providers, and law enforcement fluctuating from nearly nonexistent to oppressive and threatening.

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Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on Miscarriage

A number of insightful works have come from anthropology. Ethnographic fieldwork in the United States provides a follow-up to the historical studies noted above. Layne 2003 provides an in-depth and nuanced ethnography of pregnancy-loss support groups in the United States, and the author supplements this analysis with articles expanding her work in this field (Layne 2001, Layne 2006). Wilson 2009 examines Buddhist practice in the United States, particularly the ritual of mizuko kuyo, which addresses aborted and miscarried pregnancies, and the author also extends his analysis to some comparison with Japan. Cecil 1996 collects essays from anthropologists and historians, providing a broader smattering of cross-cultural perspectives. A 2010 Social Science and Medicine special issue on childbearing loss contains two articles particularly relevant to miscarriage, putting miscarriage in the context of a variety of reproductive and social pressures on women in Cameroon (van der Sijpt 2010) and Tanzania (Haws, et al. 2010). Frost, et al. 2007 considers early pregnancy loss as a kind of death that is particularly poorly addressed in the medical/scientific setting. These studies cannot be assembled into a single coherent picture, but together, they address important questions about the meaning of personhood and how personhood is attributed, women’s experiences and agency (or lack thereof), the interaction between medical practitioners and miscarrying women, and the relevance of the social context of reproduction.

  • Cecil, Rosanne, ed. The Anthropology of Pregnancy Loss: Comparative Studies in Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Neo-natal Death. Washington, DC: Berg, 1996.

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    Contains anthropological and sociological studies of miscarriage in India, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Cameroon, South Africa, Ireland, and the United States, as well as one historical essay (see Jackson 1996, cited under Historical Perspectives on Miscarriage).

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  • Frost, Julia, Harriet Bradley, Ruth Levitas, Lindsay Smith, and Jo Garcia. “The Loss of Possibility: Scientisation of Death and the Special Case of Early Miscarriage.” Sociology of Health & Illness 29.7 (2007): 1003–1022.

    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01019.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Powerful ethnographic material demonstrating that the complexity of the early miscarriage experience is embedded in a narrow theoretical framework that assumes a particular perspective, coming out of research on death and bereavement.

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  • Haws, Rachel A., Irene Mashasi, Mwifadhi Mrisho, Joanna Armstrong Schellenberg, Gary L. Darmstadt, and Peter J. Winch. “‘These Are Not Good Things for Other People to Know’: How Rural Tanzanian Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy Loss and Early Neonatal Death May Impact Survey Data Quality.” Social Science and Medicine 71.10 (2010): 1764–1772.

    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.03.051Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    On the basis of in-depth ethnographic and interview-based research, demonstrates that pregnancy loss in Tanzania is frequently kept hidden, from both the local community and outside surveyors, because of a variety of socially and economically structured constraints on women that are not readily apparent to the casual observer. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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  • Layne, Linda L. “In Search of Community: Tales of Pregnancy Loss in Three Toxically Assaulted Communities in the US.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 29.1–2 (2001): 25–50.

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    Layne looks at three communities where high rates of pregnancy loss caused by toxic pollution became a public, political issue and asks whether this raised concern and awareness created better community support for women who miscarried. She concludes that it by and large did not. Available online by subscription.

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  • Layne, Linda L. Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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    Evocative ethnography based on intensive fieldwork in pregnancy loss support groups. Addresses the relationship of miscarriage to broader cultural patterns in technology, medicine, science, patient advocacy, consumption, and religion.

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  • Layne, Linda L. “Some Unintended Consequences of New Reproductive and Information Technologies on the Experience of Pregnancy Loss.” In Women, Gender, and Technology. Edited by Mary Frank Fox, Deborah G. Johnson, and Sue V. Rosser, 122–156. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

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    Looks at how a variety of technologies, including pregnancy education materials, ultrasound, home pregnancy tests, and the Internet, have impacted women’s experiences of miscarriage in the United States and argues that we have paid far too little attention to the consequences of our unreflective embrace of these technologies.

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  • van der Sijpt, Erica. “Marginal Matters: Pregnancy Loss as a Social Event.” Social Science and Medicine 71.10 (2010): 1773–1779.

    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.03.055Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Contains the compelling story of one woman’s two miscarriages in Cameroon, showing how her experience of them and their meaning is framed by the broader context of her other reproductive experiences, her marriage and family life, and social expectations about childbearing, in a way substantially different from Western contexts. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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  • Wilson, Jeff. Mourning the Unborn Dead: A Buddhist Ritual Comes to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371932.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A careful description of the mizuko kuyo Buddhist ritual from a religious studies scholar who conducted extensive fieldwork in multiple sites. Miscarriage is not the primary subject, but the book raises the important question of how and when miscarriage might be experienced/treated like abortion, because the two are not distinguished in the ritual. Contains useful summaries of other scholars’ work on the same ritual in Japan.

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Social and Cultural Analysis of Pregnancy

Anthropological and sociological ethnographers have highlighted the importance of cultural context to women’s experiences of pregnancy, in the United States and around the world; while miscarriage is not the focus of the works summarized here, it can be better understood when framed by the analyses of pregnancy this scholarship provides. Martin 1987 examines production metaphors for reproduction in medical texts and medical care and interviews approximately two hundred Philadelphia women about their experiences with their reproductive bodies. Rapp 2000 takes an ethnographic look at amniocentesis in highly diverse New York City. Taylor 2008 analyzes the impact of sonography on pregnancy in the United States through interviews with sonographers as well as pregnant women and their partners. Thompson 2005 presents a sophisticated analysis of ethnographic encounters with family-making and meaning-making in IVF clinics in the United States. Ethnographers working outside the United States present important comparative perspectives and register the diverse impacts of reproductive modernization around the world. Ivry 2009 compares pregnant women’s experiences of prenatal care in Israel and Japan. Bledsoe 2002 examines Gambian women’s strategies for using traditional and modern contraceptives to support their health and, counterintuitively, increase their lifetime fertility (includes specific discussion of the relationship between “reproductive mishaps,” including miscarriage, and contraceptive use). Gerber 2002 brings to light French women’s perceptions of the products of conception after RU-486 use. Georges 2008 explores the specific ways modern obstetric care has been integrated into Greek reproductive experiences.

  • Bledsoe, Caroline. Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time, and Aging in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

    DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226058504.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    An ethnographic investigation into women’s strategies for managing fertility in a high-fertility society. Describes women’s sometimes counterintuitive measures to promote lifetime childbearing, including using birth control pills and Depo-Provera after “reproductive mishaps” including miscarriages, sometimes for extended periods, to rest the body in preparation for future childbearing. Challenges Western demographers’ assumptions about contraceptive use and the relationships among time, aging, and fertility.

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  • Georges, Eugenia. Bodies of Knowledge: The Medicalization of Reproduction in Greece. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.

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    A historical and ethnographic look at how Greek women have adapted modern technologies and approaches to pregnancy and birth to serve their historically and culturally situated needs and desires.

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  • Gerber, Elaine. “Deconstructing Pregnancy: Seeing ‘Eggs’ and the Ambiguity of Very Early Conceptions.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 16.1 (2002): 92–108.

    DOI: 10.1525/maq.2002.16.1.92Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Ethnographic interviews with French women who have used RU-486 to interrupt early pregnancies and produce abortion substantiate a sensitive analysis of how exactly the products of conception may be perceived. The women interviewed feel responsible for choosing not to sustain pregnancy and accept a future child; they describe “eggs” when they see what has been expelled. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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  • Ivry, Tsipy. Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

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    A comparative analysis of the experience of pregnancy in Japan and Israel, particularly in relation to health-care provision and health advice. Demonstrates how culture frames the pregnant woman’s role, the meaning of (and desire for) prenatal testing, and the obstetrician-patient relationship.

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  • Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon, 1987.

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    A feminist-Marxist look at experiences of reproduction and women’s reproductive bodies (menstruation, PMS, birth, menopause), analyzing cultural metaphors of production and resistance to them. Accessible and provocative ethnographically based analysis.

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  • Rapp, Rayna. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge, 2000.

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    Scores of interviews with a diverse array of women receiving genetic counseling and amniocentesis in New York City serve as the basis for a sharp analysis of the diversity of meanings women and their partners make of pregnancy, testing, therapeutic abortion, and disability.

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  • Taylor, Janelle S. The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption, and the Politics of Reproduction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

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    An ethnographic and cultural studies analysis of obstetric ultrasound in the United States, based on interviews with pregnant women and their partners/supporters, interviews with sonographers, and public images of sonograms in advertising and other public venues.

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  • Thompson, Charis. Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

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    A sophisticated and at times dense analysis of specific aspects of meaning-making in IVF clinics, focused on the creation of “natural” parents, children, and families in the new, ambiguous situations created by the use of new reproductive technology. Compelling ethnographic stories illuminate complex theoretical analysis.

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Philosophical and Feminist Perspectives on Miscarriage

Feminist philosophers and cultural critics have considered the implications of current constructions of pregnancy and pregnancy loss for women’s experiences and proposed a variety of interventions. Jutel 2006 points out the fraught nature of the medical and legal language naming pregnancy loss. Hale 2007 suggests a way to address women’s feelings of guilt without denying their agency. Layne 2007 proposes an explicitly feminist model of pregnancy and birth education that would prepare women for losses as well as for full-term births of living children.

  • Hale, B. “Culpability and Blame after Pregnancy Loss.” Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (2007): 24–27.

    DOI: 10.1136/jme.2005.015560Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A subtle look at the phenomenon of feelings of guilt after miscarriage; distinguishes between responsibility and culpability, arguing that women are right to feel responsible for their pregnancies but not culpable for a pregnancy’s failure if they acted responsibly. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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  • Jutel, Annemarie. “What’s in a Name? Death before Birth.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 49.3 (2006): 425–434.

    DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2006.0040Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A close look at how the naming of a pregnancy loss as “stillbirth,” “abortion,” or “miscarriage,” along with the legal and medical definitions of those terms, can impact the experience of loss. Written about New Zealand, it addresses European and Maori traditions and New Zealand law, but it is largely applicable to the broader English-language world as well. Available online by subscription.

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  • Layne, Linda L. “Designing a Woman-Centered Health Care Approach to Pregnancy Loss: Lessons from Feminist Models of Childbirth.” In Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium. Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn, 79–97. New York: Berghahn, 2007.

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    Proposes a model of prepared pregnancy loss, on the model of prepared childbirth. A programmatic essay based on decades of previous ethnographic research.

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Medical and Public Health Perspectives on Miscarriage

Medical and public health literature on miscarriage (often referred to as “spontaneous abortion” in this literature) is relatively robust. The Cochrane Database provides evidence-based recommendations on matters relating to medical practice. The medical and public health literature can be further broken down into research on why miscarriage happens, how it might be prevented, and managing miscarriages in progress. PubMed can be searched for the most recent literature, or for more on a particular topic.

Miscarriage Prevention

Miscarriage remains poorly understood, though it is clear that the majority of miscarried embryos and fetuses have genetic abnormalities. External factors may also play a role: Among recent examples, da Silva e Sá, et al. 2011 examines the impact of rubella vaccine in Brazil; Nakhai-Pour, et al. 2011 looks at the impact of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs); Rumbold, et al. 2011 examines the possible effect of prenatal vitamins on miscarriage; Udechuku, et al. 2010 reviews the literature on antidepressants in pregnancy; and Weselak, et al. 2008 presents a toxicological perspective. Researchers are particularly concerned with investigating and remedying the cause of recurrent miscarriage. Cohen 2005 summarizes the literature for a nonphysician audience. Additional explanations have since been suggested, such as a maternal inability to weed out chromosomally unviable embryos (Teklenburg, et al. 2010). All of this research has treatment and prevention implications, in that presumably if significant causes of miscarriage could be avoided during pregnancy, some portion of miscarriages could be prevented.

Miscarriage Management

Physicians have debated since the mid-19th century whether miscarriages should be allowed to progress naturally (“expectant” treatment) or helped along by a doctor who dilates the cervix and performs a curettage or evacuation of the uterus (“surgical” treatment). More recently, the promotion of the miscarriage with the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol has become another option (“medical” treatment). Recently, these options have been compared directly. Trinder, et al. 2006 compares the outcomes of these options in a clinical trial in Great Britain, finding only minor differences in clinical outcomes, and Weeks and Danielsson 2006 editorializes on this trial, advocating that women be allowed to choose based on their personal medical and emotional needs. Prine and MacNaughton 2011 summarizes this perspective for an American audience of family physicians.

Psychological and Counseling Perspectives on Miscarriage

Since the 1970s, the psychological and counseling literature has begun to give substantial attention to women’s and families’ immediate and longer-term experiences of miscarriage and the impact of miscarriage on subsequent experiences of childbearing. As researchers have observed that the stage of pregnancy at the time of loss is not necessarily predictive of the intensity of reaction to it (Carter, et al. 2007), many researchers’ definition of “perinatal loss” has widened from specifying stillbirth and neonatal death to encompass miscarriages as well, and responses previously diagnosed in terms of specific conditions such as “depression” and “anxiety” are now generally understood to be manifestations of grief and bereavement (Brier 2008). The Perinatal Grief Scale, widely used to document psychological response to miscarriage, asks a series of questions worded to assume that the woman feels she has lost a “baby,” quite possibly slanting results in this direction. Unlike many historians and anthropologists, psychologists writing about miscarriage tend to assume that human experiences are stable across time and culture and believe that they are newly recognizing a long-standing phenomenon, rather than observing a phenomenon that has newly arisen, though cross-cultural studies suggest that there are cultural variations in responses to miscarriage, even when the study is conducted using the Perinatal Grief Scale, with its embedded assumptions about the meaning of miscarriage (Toedter, et al. 2001). Many have observed that women have a range of reactions, and Lovell 1997, among other works, suggests that medical staff assisting in the miscarriage process should support women in whatever their understanding of their experience might be. Limbo, et al. 2010 extends this principle to the disposition of the remains of the products of conception. Cote-Arsenault and Mahlangu 1999, among other works, observed that women may find pregnancies subsequent to miscarriage psychologically difficult and recommend sensitive support from health-care practitioners. Callister 2006 points to the importance of remembering not only that the woman who has miscarried is affected and should be treated appropriately, but also that her family is impacted as well. Researchers have observed that women who for whatever reason have needed technological assistance to become pregnant may have particularly fraught experiences of miscarriage; Peel 2010 examines this issue for lesbian couples.

Audiovisual Resources

Layne 2005–2009 is a compelling and unique series of interviews with a variety of experts across fields, reflecting on various aspects of pregnancy loss (including miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death).

  • Layne, Linda L. Motherhood Lost: Conversations. Hosted and coproduced by Linda L. Layne and Heather Bailey. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Television, 2005–2009.

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    Layne interviews a variety of experts about a number of aspects of pregnancy loss in the United States. Eleven episodes address miscarriage in fiction, legal issues, improving medical care for miscarrying women, domestic violence and miscarriage, preventing stillbirth, and religious and feminist rituals for recognizing and commemorating pregnancy loss.

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