Abortion vs. Miscarriage - A Response to "crowepps"

A commenter named "crowepps" left a comment on my Open Letter to Congresswoman Speier, and as both her comment and my response are lengthy, I figured it was better served by its own post than a long comment.

"crowepps" begins:

The difference between 'abortion' and 'miscarriage' is that the first is a medical term and the second is a layman's term.

Technically, this is true. However, "miscarriage" is more often used in medical parlance to refer to a spontaneous abortion, as can be evidenced by the quote in my original post from the National Center for Biotechnology Information: "A miscarriage may also be called a 'spontaneous abortion.' This refers to naturally occurring events, not medical abortions or surgical abortions."

Here is the medical definition as doctors use the term from emedicinehealth.com "Abortion: In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost. A spontaneous abortion is the same as a miscarriage. The miscarriage of 3 or more consecutive pregnancies is termed habitual abortion."

emedicinehealth.com also has a definition for miscarriage: "A miscarriage (also termed spontaneous abortion) is any pregnancy that spontaneously ends before the fetus can survive."

So it seems, based on the above, that "miscarriage" and "spontaneous abortion" can be used interchangeably.

I too had the experience of having my fetus stop developing without a spontaneous abortion starting; the correct medical term for this condition is EITHER "missed pregnancy" OR "missed abortion".

I'm very sorry for the loss of your child.

My midwife referred to my experience as a "missed miscarriage," as did the OB who performed my D&C. Regardless as to what it was called on the official paperwork, that was not the terminology my care providers used.

I'm of the opinion that the medical terminology does need an update given the current negative connotations of "abortion." The last thing a mother who is losing a very much loved and wanted baby needs to hear is that she's having an "abortion," because that lumps her in with all the women who are voluntarily and deliberately throwing away the precious gift of a healthy baby.

"D&C abortion" is the name of the medical procedure which removes the remains of the placenta and dead fetus to prevent infection and allow another attempt at pregnancy. It is done with the exact same equipment and in the exact same manner as a 'birth control' abortion because there are not two separate, different names for the procedure depending on whether the fetus is dead or alive, or depending on the motives of the women having the procedure.

Yes, that is exactly what I said in my open letter to Congresswomen Speier. Did you read the entire post?

As I said in my original post, D&Cs and D&Es are morally neutral as procedures. They have very legitimate uses, such as treating missed abortions (which I am assuming that both you, me, and Rep. Speier suffered). You will not, to my knowledge, find a single pro-lifer claiming otherwise.

Moreover, I had my D&C in a hospital, not an abortion facility. If they were the exact same procedure, why didn't the hospital just send me down the street to the "women's clinic" that did the exact same procedure on women with living, healthy babies? Why doesn't the hospital perform the procedure on women with living, healthy babies? Obviously, there is some difference, otherwise there would be no need for abortion facilities.

Medicine uses only one term for this procedure in all of the circumstances in which it may be used, and so laws that forbid doctors to do "abortions" are going to ban precisely the procedure I had and the women here had and Rep. Speier had and leave all of those women at risk of infection and infertility. Those laws will also ban the 60,000 abortions every year which remove ectopic pregnancies and condemn those women to die.

You have been grotesquely misinformed.

If what you say is true, then prior to 1973 and the Roe v. Wade decision, having a D&C for a missed abortion or treatment for an ectopic pregnancy would have been illegal. However, this was not the case when elective abortion was illegal. In fact, every anti-abortion law in the United States prior to Roe v. Wade had a "life of the mother" exemption.

Let's use ectopic pregnancy as an example.

The Catholic Church acknowledges that ectopic pregnancies must be treated. Such treatment (i.e., removal of the section of the fallopian tube containing the baby) falls under the principle of double effect and is morally legitimate. Any treatment for a mother's life-threatening condition is legitimate as long as it does not directly target the baby (i.e., directly kill the baby); rather, the baby's death must be an unwanted and unintended (even if foreseen) side effect of the treatment.

Given that it was not illegal to treat ectopic pregnancies prior to Roe v. Wade, I don't see how you can make the argument that this would become illegal should Roe ever be overturned. If it's that much of a concern for you, then write your elected officials and ask them to make sure that any anti-abortion laws contain language specific to elective, induced abortion and specifically exclude spontaneous or missed abortion. Problem solved.


When Rep. Speier tries to imply that I deliberately and consciously murdered my child, it is offensive. I did not have an elective, induced abortion. I did not walk into an abortion facility and pay a medical practitioner to kill my child. Neither did she, by all accounts, and she has no right whatsoever to lump together abortion and miscarriage because she is essentially equating murder with natural death. I wouldn't walk up to someone whose grandmother passed away in her sleep and accuse him of murder any more than I would tell a person who smothered his elderly grandmother with a pillow that it was a good thing his grandma passed away naturally, and why don't we go ahead and ask the government to subsidize him?

crowepps, let me introduce you to someone.

This is my second child, Noel. This is the only picture I have of him or her, as this was the ultrasound that diagnosed my missed abortion:

When I look at this picture, I don't see "products of conception" or "medical waste" or a "missed abortion." I see my beloved child, who died after only six short weeks of life (approximately). [I might add that he or she was conceived at a time when my husband and I were trying to avoid pregnancy, as we were going through a period of unemployment and financial strain. However, his or her death devastated us. Although he or she was unplanned, he or she was very much loved, was very much wanted, and is very much missed. He or she also had a right to life from the moment he or she was conceived.]

He or she is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fargo, North Dakota. We had a graveside service and a memorial Mass said for him or her.

My child was a person, a human being, and the length of his or her natural lifespan does not change that, as much as Planned Parenthood would like to pretend otherwise.