How abortion has changed the discussion of miscarriage

I was finally getting back to a normal routine. My miscarriage a few weeks earlier had taken more than just my baby. It had sapped my emotional reserves as well. I was exhausted, but began to force myself to continue the necessary day-to-day tasks.

I opened the growing pile of mail. A few bills and some unrequested catalogues were quickly set aside. But as I opened a letter from the hospital, I suddenly felt more than I had in days. I could feel my face turn red and my heart began to beat quickly.

The letter read something to the effect of:

“Dear Mrs. Thompson, Blah blah blah, your insurance company will not cover your elective abortion. Blah blah blah.”

Abortion?!?

It took a few times reading over the letter to understand that I needed to contact the hospital billing office. Surely there had been a mistake.

The conversation is still fuzzy in my mind, but basically, the hospital had “miscoded” my ER visit a few weeks before. While I had experienced what they considered a spontaneous abortion (my body had terminated the pregnancy on its own) the hospital had entered it as something similar to an elective abortion. (They said that I had made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.)

I had done everything in my power to keep my baby. Abortion was the word that described just the opposite.

It has taken me nearly 8 years to realize that abortion wasn’t just a word that was mistakenly used in place of my miscarriage; it is the word that has changed the discussion of miscarriage all together.

When I lost my baby, I was surrounded by family and friends who knew that we were expecting and wanted to support us during our time of loss. I was encouraged by those who knew for themselves the heartache we were experiencing…

But life just sort of… went on…

I joined some horrible unspoken club of women who have all had miscarriages yet no one really talks about the loss or acknowledges the baby.

There wasn’t a grave stone or a funeral or meals prepared for us for weeks. I wasn’t featured on the news or connected by the hospital to other mothers who had experienced similar heartache.

I was sent home to continue to live like my baby had never died – like there never was a baby.

But recently, I have realized that this response is an indicator of the state of our society.

After all, it is hard for a society to mourn the loss of WANTED unborn life when it is busy calling it “tissue” and discrediting its personhood.

It is hard for a society to embrace a mourning mother for her loss of tissue when it is busy defending another mother’s right to dispose of it.

But for a woman who prays ceaselessly for life to fill her womb,

For a woman who has tried for years to finally have children of her own.

For an expectant mother who suddenly finds herself frantically calling her OB after finding bright red blood…

The “material” in her tummy is anything but tissue.

It is life.


http://www.scissortailsilk.com/2014/05/13/how-abortion-has-changed-the-discussion-of-miscarriage/