Secular Pro-Life
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet The Team
    • Mission and Vision
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Stances
      • Abortion
      • Religion
      • Contraception
      • The Rape Exception
    • Terms and Conditions
      • Opt-out preferences
  • Content
    • Index
    • Blog
    • Presentations
      • A Secular Case Against Abortion
      • Building Bridges
      • Deconstructing Three Pro-Choice Myths
      • Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study
    • Research
      • Abortion Law and Abortion Rates
      • Abortion Law and Pregnancy Rates
      • Later Abortion
      • Embryonic Hearts
    • Collections
      • Becoming Pro-Life
      • They can hear you
      • Parents can hear you
      • Our children’s heartbeats
      • Ask An Atheist
      • LGBTQ and Pro-Life
      • Fixed that meme for you
      • For the biology textbook tells me so
    • Print Materials
      • 100 Pro-Life Sign Ideas
      • Overview of SPL
      • 3 Reasons to tell people you’re pro-life
      • How to talk (not fight) about abortion
      • Bridges PRC Curriculum
      • Fetal Remains Disposition Protocol
      • FAQ handout
      • Presentations overview card
    • Store
  • Contact
  • Get Involved
    • Why support SPL?
    • Donor Opportunities
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Volunteer Survey
    • More Surveys
      • Why do you support SPL?
      • Best and Worst Abortion Arguments
      • “Ask An Atheist” Interview
      • Non-Traditional Pro-Life Survey
      • LGBT Pro-Life Survey
      • Parents experiences with prenatal screening
      • Your experiences with adoption
      • Your experiences with processing abortion
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

Describing miscarriage as “intrauterine death” threatens abortion rights

July 26, 2024/in Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss, Uncategorized /by Monica Snyder

In 2023, Jessalyn Bohn wrote “When Words Fail: ‘Miscarriage,’ Referential Ambiguity, and Psychological Harm.” She called for more precision and sensitivity when describing pregnancy loss.

About a year later, Belinda Alievska wrote some reflections of Bohn’s work: The Implications of Revising The Terminology of Pregnancy Loss. Specifically Alievska worried that Bohn’s proposed phrase “intrauterine death” has “potential to influence debates surrounding pregnancy amidst a highly charged political atmosphere.” In particular, Alievska was concerned the phrase could “fundamentally alter the public and political discourse surrounding abortion.” She elaborated:

Adopting terminology [for miscarriage] that emphasizes the loss of life, such as “intrauterine death,” could shift the perception of abortion from a medical procedure to an act with more profound moral and emotional weight.

Belinda Alievska

Further, Alievska observed:

The term “death” is often reserved for the loss of life. We use the term death to speak of humans, pets and other animals, and other living entities (such as plants).

Belinda Alievska

It’s difficult to imagine an argument that explains why “death” could fairly describe the end of a plant’s life but not an embryo’s.

Alievska noted, correctly, that Secular Pro-Life has referenced Bohn’s work before, although she may not be sure what precisely our point was when we did so. This is the passage from Bohn that I quoted:

“While the experience of losing one’s child or delivering prematurely is traumatic on its own, those bereaved by intrauterine death suffer additional, mitigatable, psychological harm. Specifically, they often struggle with disenfranchised grief–‘grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported’–misplaced guilt, and shock at preterm delivery’s physical reality.”

Jessalyn Bohn

I highlighted this quote to emphasize the phenomenon of loss parents feeling unsupported and silenced as we navigate our anguish. This is an extension of my prior discussion about how some more strident defenses of abortion involve gaslighting loss parents and minimizing our grief.

[Read more – Our cultural gaslighting of women who miscarry before 20 weeks]

And then Alievska wrote an article hesitating over whether society should clearly and sensitively acknowledge the losses that parents experience, because doing so risks undermining abortion rights.

She’s making my point for me.


If you appreciate our work and would like to help, one of the most effective ways to do so is to become a monthly donor. You can also give a one time donation here or volunteer with us here.

Related Posts

Tags: academia
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://i0.wp.com/secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/dominoes.png?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1 1080 1080 Monica Snyder https://secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SecularProlife2.png Monica Snyder2024-07-26 04:30:002024-09-16 09:50:29Describing miscarriage as “intrauterine death” threatens abortion rights
You might also like
Society of Family Planning: how to induce fetal asystole (baby heart attack)
No, Dobbs hasn’t caused “sweeping changes” in where doctors practice medicine
Testing biological tissue for abortion drugs
No, Texas maternal mortality didn’t “skyrocket” after heartbeat law
Pro-abortion lexicon: don’t say “heartbeat” or “living”
Controversy around Abortion Pill Reversal: a quick overview
The Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study
Did Texas’ Heartbeat Law increase infant mortality rates?

Follow via Email

* indicates required

Categories

  • Ableism
  • Abortion pills
  • Administrative
  • Adoption & Foster Care
  • Biology
  • Bodily Rights
  • Dialogue strategy
  • en español
  • Later Abortion
  • Legislation, laws, & court cases
  • Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss
  • Personhood
  • Philosophy
  • Pro-Life Demographics
  • Rape Exception
  • Religion
  • Research
  • Speeches, Discussions, Presentations
  • SPL Emails
  • They Can Hear You
  • Top SPL Articles
  • Top SPL Graphics
  • Uncategorized
  • We Asked You Answered
  • Year In Review
  • Your Stories

Archive

It’s crucial that we demonstrate that anyone can–and everyone should–oppose abortion. Thanks to you, we are working to change minds, transform our culture, and protect our prenatal children. Every donation supports our ability to provide nonsectarian, nonpartisan arguments against abortion. Read more details here. Please donate today.

DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
© Copyright 2025 Secular Pro-Life. All rights reserved. Website Design by TandarichGroup

Related Posts

Blog Hiatus There’s a Fortune in Abortion
Scroll to top
Manage Consent

To provide the best experience, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}

Subscribe for Livestream Updates and More

* indicates required

Interests

Want to receive our email newsletter?

We’d be happy to keep in touch. Subscribe for access to our newsletter and other updates.