The Myriad Meanings of a Pregnancy
It is not difficult to support a woman’s right to choose and to help her mourn a baby lost.

By Julia Bueno
June 28, 2019

I meet a lot of women in my working life who are desperate to become mothers, and also those who may have to delay motherhood, or not want to take that path. They seek me out for help with a range of psychological and emotional issues: We discuss their inner and outer worlds, how they relate to others and themselves, their bodies, their pregnancies and in some cases, the babies they’d hoped to have but lost. Our conversations, in England, are rooted in a freedom that is currently imperiled across the United States, from Georgia to Alabama to Iowa, and that my fellow citizens in Northern Ireland also don’t have. I’ve been starkly reminded in recent months how the state can have a tremendous bearing on a woman’s private life.

I am a psychotherapist specializing in pregnancy loss. I am also a firm believer in a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy. I could never have predicted how my work would buttress my belief that a woman’s desperate desire for her pregnancy to end in a live birth is as equally valid and honorable as the next woman’s choice to end hers.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/abortion-miscarriage.html