Invisible Labours

This study follows women's experiences of miscarriage and of termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before the point of legal viability. It shows that these losses are often treated as less real or less significant when the foetus does not survive, or is not expected to.

Invisible Labours describes the reproductive politics of this kind of pregnancy loss in England. It argues that second trimester loss produces its own medical and social experiences, and that these reveal an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. For some women, the loss is understood through a sense of kinship with the unborn baby.