Grandstand. In 2022, in France, one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage in the first twenty-two weeks of amenorrhea. And one in ten women is at risk of miscarriage in her lifetime. Every year, 200,000 French women go through this ordeal. We have crossed it at least once. Or all of us know at least one woman, one couple who have experienced it. This woman is your friend, your sister, your spouse, your colleague, your patient…
All of us have been confronted with the omerta linked to miscarriages. To this violent and insidious silence. Together, we decide to fight against this isolation and break this taboo.
Miscarriage is a social issue, a potential stage of motherhood that does not have to be hidden. Let’s recognize it.
By the way, let’s start with the words. Let’s put an end to the expression “having a miscarriage” which makes you feel guilty and invisible. Because nothing is wrong, and everything is true. Because we don’t “make miscarriages”, but suffer them. And that words weigh on our minds, dictate our thoughts and influence our actions. Let’s talk about “natural termination of pregnancy”. Because that’s what it’s all about and what we experience in our bodies.
A traumatic event
Undergoing a natural termination of pregnancy is a traumatic event for many women. An event that has both physical and psychological consequences. For many, these are contractions, hemorrhages for several days, extreme loneliness, total silence, misunderstanding, guilt, a feeling of emptiness and shame. And even if not everyone experiences it badly, it is an event that is anything but trivial.
To undergo a natural termination of pregnancy is still too often to be faced with a health practitioner who tells us that the event is “trivial” without recognizing its absolute singularity, that ” Nature is well made “and who sends us home without explanation or follow-up, to finish expelling our embryo to the toilet.
To undergo a natural termination of pregnancy is to run even more risk of undergoing gynecological and obstetrical violence, brutal and dehumanizing procedures and words, without information or precautions.
To undergo a natural termination of pregnancy is to have to beg for a work stoppage which makes us precarious (by the waiting period). It is, for many of us, returning home without even imagining, for lack of information, that we could obtain professional psychological support.
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