“It Just Made Me Feel Very Broken”: Misogyny and Discriminatory Hierarchisation in British English Pregnancy Loss Terminology

This research explores attitudes to diagnostic terminology for pregnancy loss in contemporary British English, amongst participants with experience of receiving and delivering care during and after pregnancy loss. A total of 339 contributions, gathered via focus groups and written testimonies, were collected and analysed using thematic and discourse analytic procedures. These revealed that much of this terminology is associated with discourses of loss as a failure of the pregnant body. This compounds the pervasive assumption in western Anglophone cultures that the bodies of women and other birthing people are solely responsible for pregnancy outcomes, contributing to medical misogyny in maternity care. Separately, study data also highlighted perceptions of a discriminatory model of pregnancy loss care, perpetuated by language, which invalidates the grief and trauma of those experiencing loss at earlier gestations, despite mounting evidence of long-lasting psychological ramifications. This study thus reveals pregnancy loss terminology in British English as a site of fossilised gendered prejudice.