Interrogating Pregnancy Loss

Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth

Whereas biomedical and feminist literature treat abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth as differently conceptualized events, this collection explores the connections between these three categories. How have feminist debates and strategies around reproductive choice invigorated the cultural conversation about miscarriage and stillbirth? How can we imagine more nuanced engagements with the spectrum of experiences that are at stake when a pregnancy ends? And how can we effectively create a space where pregnant people contend with the ways that loss makes meaning for those who grieve and/or celebrate the end of pregnancy? This collection centres pregnancy loss as an embodied and social phenomenon within a framework that understands pregnancy as a process with no guaranteed outcomes. Interrogating Pregnancy Loss considers pregnancy as an epistemic source, one that has the capacity to reveal the limits of our collective assumptions about temporality, expectation, narrative, and social legitimacy. By interrogating loss, this collection argues that the lessons learned from loss have the capacity to serve our collective understandings of both the expected and unexpected rhythms of social and reproductive life.