I was scrolling through Instagram this morning when a reel popped up. It showed a woman surrounded by ultrasound photos, baby clothes, parenting books, and plush stuffies. The text on screen read “this is what a late term abortion looks like.” The comments were filled with people remarking about how no one is villainizing miscarriages, and “this isn’t what we’re talking about” repeated again and again. The woman was reminding commenters that those same abortion laws were harmful to her. 

Recently, we have received tons of DMs and comments inquiring about how abortion bans can possibly impact people suffering from a miscarriage. We’re here to talk about it, because this really really matters. 

Miscarriage is defined as “the spontaneous loss of a woman's pregnancy before the 20th week.” This generally happens because the pregnancy stops growing. Pregnancy tissue naturally passes out of the body, but sometimes it may require medication to help the process. Miscarriages are common! Oftentimes they happen before someone even realizes they’re pregnant, and can be mistaken for a period. 

On the other hand, abortion is a medical procedure to end a pregnancy– by medication or surgery. Medication abortion appears similarly to a miscarriage, as the pregnancy tissue also passes through the body after taking mifepristone and misoprostol.

Mifepristone and misoprostol are often referred to as the “abortion pill.” Mifepristone blocks progesterone—a hormone your body needs to maintain a pregnancy. Without it, the uterine lining breaks down, and the pregnancy can’t continue. Misoprostol comes in after, triggering the uterus to contract and expel its contents. When used in sequence, they’re highly effective at clearing the uterus without surgery—whether the pregnancy is wanted, unwanted, or no longer viable.

What many people don’t know is that both mifepristone and misoprostol are used to manage miscarriages. These meds aren't just for abortion—they're also standard, safe treatments for incomplete or missed miscarriages. 

A missed miscarriage is when the pregnancy has ended but the body hasn’t passed the tissue yet. Mifepristone and misoprostol can speed up what would otherwise take days or weeks, allowing someone to avoid the trauma of waiting or undergoing an invasive procedure like a D&C. These medications are effective, non-surgical, and give patients more control over where, when, and how a miscarriage is managed. 

In states with abortion bans or heavy restrictions, doctors and pharmacists may hesitate, or outright refuse, to provide these meds. Even for miscarriage care. Why? Because the exact same pills are used for medication abortion, and many laws don’t clearly distinguish between abortion and miscarriage management. Remember, in states like Texas, doctors face prison time for providing abortion care. 

Doctors’ denial of care is not hypothetical. In Texas, 30-year-old Amanda Zurawski was forced to go into septic shock before a hospital would treat her miscarriage. Her water had broken at 18 weeks, and the fetus was no longer viable, but because the fetal heartbeat hadn’t stopped yet, doctors told her they couldn’t intervene without risking prison under Texas’s abortion ban. By the time she got care, her life was on the line. She survived, but her fallopian tubes are permanently damaged, which will affect her ability to have children in the future.

Navaeh Crain was an 18-year-old who died in Texas on the day of her baby shower in 2023. She went to two hospitals and was denied care, even though she had sepsis, because the doctor still heard a fetal heartbeat. At the third hospital, Navaeh’s organs started failing, and hours later she died without care. Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for treatments that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. And even with life-saving exceptions, it is often too confusing, or too late.

Not just this, but in 2023, Britney Watts, an Ohio woman, was arrested and charged with felony abuse of a corpse after miscarrying in her bathroom and seeking help at the hospital. Let that sink in: she lost her pregnancy and was treated like a criminal for how her body handled it.

We could go on, but there are too many stories to tell. People are being traumatized, hospitalized, even criminalized—not because they chose to end a pregnancy, but because their pregnancies ended on their own. And still, the system treats them as secondary citizens to their own bodies. 

So that’s it, abortion bans limit care for those experiencing miscarriages because the same exact medications and procedures used for abortion are also standard for managing miscarriages. The fact that this healthcare is under legal attack, despite being safe, proven, and recommended by every major medical organization, just adds insult to injury for people already dealing with pregnancy loss. We will keep screaming it into the abyss: abortion is healthcare.