Pregnancy Loss and Miscarriage

When Nothing Bad Happens: Miranda July’s ‘All Fours’ Captures the Importance of Understanding Infant Health

When November’s announcement by the CDC that our infant mortality rate remains abysmal did not make even the tiniest of dents in the post-election news cycle, my thoughts pivoted from the patient’s I’ve lost as a doctor who cares for critically ill newborns to Miranda July’s blockbuster summer novel All Fours.

As I read, I could not help but wonder how to help parents like this narrator, the same parents I care for daily, feel in real time that NICU stories are a mainstream part of comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

Hospitals Gave Patients Meds During Childbirth, Then Reported Them For Positive Drug Tests

Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests.

Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities. A drug test had turned up traces of benzodiazepine—the very medication that staff had administered before wheeling her into surgery.

War on Women Report: Infant Mortality on Rise Post-Roe; Want a President Who Isn’t Accused of Rape? ‘Request Denied,’ Tweets Andrew Tate

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U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We refuse to go back, and we refuse to let the incoming Trump administration quietly dismantle the progress we’ve made. We are watching. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report…
—Since the Dobbs decision, U.S. infant mortality rates were higher than usual, with hundreds more infants dying than expected. Abortion bans can hurt access to broader healthcare for both babies and mothers, including reducing a state’s number of maternal healthcare providers as bans lead to OB-GYN exoduses.
—Seven women, including three in Texas, have died after receiving inadequate miscarriage and abortion care.
—Trump’s win, after being accused of sexual assault by 27 women, sends a disheartening message to victims of sexual assault and advocates.

… and more.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.

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Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see his wife. Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

Rest in Power: A Running List of the Preventable Deaths Caused by Abortion Bans

Porsha Ngumezi.
Josseli Barnica.
Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick.
Nevaeh Crain.
Amber Nicole Thurman.
Candi Miller.
Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski.

Today, 21 states ban abortion or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade. These states are failing women and their families, causing preventable deaths and irreparable pain and heartbreak for their families—leaving children without mothers, parents without their daughters, and spouses without their partners.

A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage

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Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy. The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria. Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.

Keeping Score: Federal Judge to DeSantis, ‘It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’; N.Y. Woman Investigated for Pregnancy Loss; Abortion Is #1 Issue for Women Voters Under 30

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Abortion is the number one election issue for women under 30; a record-breaking 300,000 Georgians cast their ballots on the first day; equal pay trailblazer Lilly Ledbetter died at age 86; X (Twitter) fails to quickly remove revenge porn; less than 1 percent of U.S. abortions happen after 21 weeks; and more.

Abortion Ad ‘Something’s Missing’ Spotlights the Families Left Behind

2024 has seen a flurry of abortion-themed campaign ads, from January’s ad featuring Dr. Austin Dennard, the OB-GYN in Texas denied an abortion for her dangerous pregnancy, to July’s featuring testimony from Hadley Duvall, the Kentucky woman raped and impregnated by her stepfather as a child.

Now, in the wake of horrors like Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller’s 2022 deaths—officially deemed “preventable” by a Georgia maternal health board last week— the latest ad from All* Above All and Project 68 hones in on the families left behind when abortion bans kill women by keeping them from life-saving care.

Keeping Score: Childcare Costs Top Pre-Pandemic Levels; Sharp Rise in Texas Maternal Mortality; Oct. 3 Marks Latina Equal Pay Day

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: a Georgia judge strikes down the state’s six-week abortion ban; JD Vance and Tim Walz debate; childcare costs rise after pandemic-era grants expire; Senate Republicans again block IVF protections; school superintendants are overwhelmingly male; Kentucky governor bans conversion therapy; nonbinary adults face violence and discrimination at work; Aisha Nyandoro, founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, is on the TIME 100 Next list; University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts (host of the Ms. podcast Torn Apart) has won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” award; and more.

Criminalization of Pregnant Women Skyrockets, Based on the Legal Fiction of ‘Fetal Personhood’

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New research reveals at least 210 women faced criminal charges because of their pregnancies or pregnancy outcomes in the year after Dobbs—the highest number of documented prosecutions in a single year. The real number is likely much higher, according to new research released by Pregnancy Justice.

“Our new report shows how the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record,” said Lourdes A. Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice. “Being pregnant places people at increased risk, not only of dire health outcomes, but of arrest.”