The original Loss comic is about a miscarriage. The husband goes to the hospital, is directed to his wife’s room, and he has to cope with the loss of the pregnancy with his wife. The reason this 4-panel comic became a meme is largely because this was a departure from the previous tone of the webcomic it came from, and was used as a “fridging” trope, so people tend to make fun of it (but I digress).
In a red state, the hospital would refuse treatment for a miscarriage out of fear of being criminally charged with performing an abortion for helping terminate a non-viable pregnancy. They would turn the patient away, and only intervene with the patient is bleeding out and dying, but by that point it’s usually too late.
What is depicted in this comic is a real-world example of what happens to women in red states who suffer miscarriages. They are denied medical treatment, and have literally bled out and died in their cars in the parking lot because nobody would help them.
1 in 5 pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. A lot of women have died completely unnecessary deaths in red states since Roe v. Wade was struck down.
The proportion of pregnancies that end in miscarriage is MUCH higher than that. Many “pregnancies” (read: fertilized ova) don’t implant in the uterus or implant and fail to progress which ends up looking like a heavy period that’s a little late. Judging the start of “life” as fertilization is absolutely inane because of how many fertilized ova just don’t make it past 16 cells or so.
You’re describing “implantation failure”, which is definitely more common than 1 in 5, but it is also not considered a miscarriage and it virtually never results in a medical emergency. This is generally viewed as a failure to become pregnant, not a failure of a pregnancy.
A miscarriage is when the embryo does implant, but the pregnancy fails. This include ectopic pregnancies where the embryo is able to implant and begin growing, but the implantation occurs outside of the ovaries (usually in the Fallopian Tubes). A miscarriage is almost always a medical emergency, especially an ectopic pregnancy.
1 in 50 pregnancies are ectopic, and this is the most dangerous diagnosis you can have in a red state. The embryo remains “alive” and “healthy” (as far as the law is concerned), but it is doomed to miscarry since it is implanted outside of the ovaries (and there is no real way to re-implant the embryo). But, because the embryo is still “alive”, red state policies treat the termination of an ectopic pregnancy as an illegal abortion, so doctors are forced to wait until it escalates into a medical emergency (which it 100% will), because treating it proactively before it becomes an emergency doesn’t pass the “medically necessary” requirements that Republican men with no understanding of female anatomy wrote into law.
But again, waiting until a woman is bleeding out or going septic is waiting too late, so women die.
I was referring to the many instances in which the blastocyst does implant, but fails to grow past the initial stages of development. Progression to the point of differentiation of tissues is the hurdle that many fertilized ova fail to clear. Failure of implantation is still important to discuss in the political context given that there are so many people with an absolute absence of biology education that think that life begins at fertilization.
The original Loss comic is about a miscarriage. The husband goes to the hospital, is directed to his wife’s room, and he has to cope with the loss of the pregnancy with his wife. The reason this 4-panel comic became a meme is largely because this was a departure from the previous tone of the webcomic it came from, and was used as a “fridging” trope, so people tend to make fun of it (but I digress).
In a red state, the hospital would refuse treatment for a miscarriage out of fear of being criminally charged with performing an abortion for helping terminate a non-viable pregnancy. They would turn the patient away, and only intervene with the patient is bleeding out and dying, but by that point it’s usually too late.
What is depicted in this comic is a real-world example of what happens to women in red states who suffer miscarriages. They are denied medical treatment, and have literally bled out and died in their cars in the parking lot because nobody would help them.
1 in 5 pregnancies ends in a miscarriage. A lot of women have died completely unnecessary deaths in red states since Roe v. Wade was struck down.
The proportion of pregnancies that end in miscarriage is MUCH higher than that. Many “pregnancies” (read: fertilized ova) don’t implant in the uterus or implant and fail to progress which ends up looking like a heavy period that’s a little late. Judging the start of “life” as fertilization is absolutely inane because of how many fertilized ova just don’t make it past 16 cells or so.
You’re describing “implantation failure”, which is definitely more common than 1 in 5, but it is also not considered a miscarriage and it virtually never results in a medical emergency. This is generally viewed as a failure to become pregnant, not a failure of a pregnancy.
A miscarriage is when the embryo does implant, but the pregnancy fails. This include ectopic pregnancies where the embryo is able to implant and begin growing, but the implantation occurs outside of the ovaries (usually in the Fallopian Tubes). A miscarriage is almost always a medical emergency, especially an ectopic pregnancy.
1 in 50 pregnancies are ectopic, and this is the most dangerous diagnosis you can have in a red state. The embryo remains “alive” and “healthy” (as far as the law is concerned), but it is doomed to miscarry since it is implanted outside of the ovaries (and there is no real way to re-implant the embryo). But, because the embryo is still “alive”, red state policies treat the termination of an ectopic pregnancy as an illegal abortion, so doctors are forced to wait until it escalates into a medical emergency (which it 100% will), because treating it proactively before it becomes an emergency doesn’t pass the “medically necessary” requirements that Republican men with no understanding of female anatomy wrote into law.
But again, waiting until a woman is bleeding out or going septic is waiting too late, so women die.
I was referring to the many instances in which the blastocyst does implant, but fails to grow past the initial stages of development. Progression to the point of differentiation of tissues is the hurdle that many fertilized ova fail to clear. Failure of implantation is still important to discuss in the political context given that there are so many people with an absolute absence of biology education that think that life begins at fertilization.