Posted ,
Reading 3 mins.
This cry from the heart was launched by a collective of women called “Miscarriage, true experience” in a column published in the newspaper Le Monde, on March 27. For them, it is necessary to recognize more this ordeal experienced by many women and break the taboos that continue to circulate around this event.
“Let’s get rid of the phrase “having a miscarriage”, because nothing is wrong, and everything is true”. This sentence alone sums up the fight of the collective “Miscarriage, true experience”. Indeed, miscarriage is an event that affects no less than 200,000 women each year, and one in four pregnancies will not go beyond the first trimester, on average.
A taboo subject
A miscarriage is usually a painful memory for women who experience it. For these women, it would be necessary to speak of a “natural termination of pregnancy“. Because the authors specify, “that’s what it’s all about and what we experience in our bodies“.
For them, “undergoing a natural termination of pregnancy is for many women a traumatic event”. “Because we don’t have miscarriages, but experience them. And let the words weigh on our minds, dictate our thoughts and influence our actions” writes the collective again in the columns of the World.
Follow your pregnancy week by week
Physical and psychological consequences
However, in 2022 still, the miscarriage is too often trivialized. While it has significant consequences for women: contractions, hemorrhage, feeling of sadness and abandonment, sometimes curettage for some women, therefore hospitalization and surgery… The consequences are not insignificant. And follow for some a feeling of shame and guilt difficult to erase.
No support or follow-up
“In 2022, the natural termination of pregnancy is a phenomenon that is still too little supported in our society. It is not associated with any support protocol, with all too rare training of health practitioners, and with no specific rights at the HR level. The natural termination of pregnancy is so invisible that we don’t even know how to talk about it or how to support it” the women’s collective is still indignant. A lack of information that “plunges individuals into immense loneliness and can leave the mark of lasting trauma in women and their spouses”.
More training and information on the subject
For the authors of the text, more training and knowledge about this event is needed. For them, it would be necessary that “in all maternities, PMI and medical practices, booklets on natural pregnancy termination are made available to couples, but also to set up training for midwives and gynecologists in order to allow better care for women . And education also goes through schools: everything related to natural termination of pregnancy should be included in the SVT program in sexuality education classes, from middle school..
The collective pleads for a work stoppage covered at 100%
For the women and couples concerned, the collective advances the idea of a “national information campaign on natural terminations of pregnancy and the creation of a toll-free number dedicated to women and their spouses”. Finally, the collective “Miscarriage, true experience” calls for the creation of a fully paid work stoppage of at least three days for women who have gone through a natural termination of pregnancy, as well as for their spouse, taking the example of New Zealand, where this device exists. And also to offer reimbursed psychological support to help them get through this painful event.
A petition collects nearly 6,000 signatures
Finally, the authors have launched a petition to support their demands, which has already collected nearly 6,000 signatures. Their text was also signed by a hundred personalities who support this initiative.