In November 2020, Meghan Markle published an article in the New York Times titled “The Losses We Share,” about her experience of miscarriage. In it, she wrote, “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.”
Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few. In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.
All true, no doubt.
However, two days after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, in a conversation Markle had with Gloria Steinem that appeared in Vogue, Markle’s thinking on “losing a child” took a strange tack. Since the Times article, she has since given birth to a third child. “I think about how fortunate I felt to be able to have both of my children,” she said. “I know what it feels like to have a connection to what is growing inside of your body.”
And what is “growing inside,” exactly?
In the New York Times article, Markle identified the occupant of her womb as her second child. She spoke of women who miscarry as “losing a child.” And yet, later, while discussing abortion, she became oddly vague.
Steinem discussed an abortion she had and said that, in the pre-Roe era, the doctor who helped her made her promise not to tell anyone his name and to do “whatever” she wanted with her life. Markle replied: “That gives me chills, Gloria. Also, that you were in the hands of someone who understood that it was your choice to create the life that you wanted for yourself. That’s so powerful.”
Perhaps aware of how this contradicts her statements on miscarriage, Markle offers an explanation: “It’s interesting that here you’re talking to two women: one who chose to give birth happily, and one who chose not to give birth happily. And we’re both prospering because we were able to make our own choices. Incredible.”
Is she now suggesting that the tragedy of miscarriage is the loss of a choice as opposed to the loss of a child? In her Times piece, Markle did not speak of thwarted dreams, but of an “almost unbearable grief,” a specific grief, for a specific person.