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This book... phew. I don't even know where to start. I learned so much and found myself shocked at simple facts that I feel like I should have known. Like the fact that the US has the highest maternal morality rate of the developed world. Or that the way we now view pregnancy and fetuses (the way people are expected, and often do, bond with their baby immediately or at least very early on in a pregnancy) is a relatively new cultural/societal phenomenon. I do think that if you are going to have an opinion on reproductive healthcare, and esPECially if you're going to try and make laws about it, you should read this book or something like it. You should know what it is you are actually forming an opinion about. And I think we should utilize modern medicine and scientific research instead of gutting programs that fund them, but hey, that's just me.

I have a laundry list of quotes that I pulled from this book. While reading, my mind was spinning and I couldn't stop the inevitable feelings of anger, sadness, and grief that I feel often come about with this topic. But sitting here and trying to whittle my thoughts into a review is proving incredibly difficult. Because where do you start? Do I talk about how fascinated I was reading about the history of pregnancy and healthcare in America? Or how frustrated I was getting as they explained the rise of the right as the "Pro-family" party? Or do I talk about seeing red while reading about the plethora of people who were denied care until their situation became what a doctor deemed 'life-threatening' simply because some people who have no business regulating pregnant bodies decided that a law protecting a woman's right to choose what her life looks like was more dangerous than the very real medical dangers of pregnancy and birth? Do I talk about how reading the chapters on grief and "making meaning" brought me back to seeing someone I love go through a stillbirth? How I can so clearly remember her telling me that she wished someone would tell her how she was supposed to get through this loss, and that all she wanted was for someone to tell her what to do next?

This book took the hellscape that is politicizing female bodies and pregnancy and put it into words. It put it into both historical and modern-day context and reminded me why this is a fight that we cannot afford to give up on. It made me feel hopeless; it made me feel hopeful. It brought so many voices into the light and showed that pregnancy loss is not this amorphous thing that some believe it is. It is experienced by so many people and yet is seen as this shameful event that only happens to a select few. And the authors touch on why: “The helplessness and loneliness so many of us feel after pregnancy loss are not a coincidence. They are the result of a culture that is deeply uncomfortably with grief, particularly female grief.� This culture of silence and shame we live in is destroying us. We cannot let it fester. Live and love and grieve and scream and cry loudly. Preferably in a government building of some sort.

“The fall of Roe has, for better or worse, brought to light the connectedness of all forms of pregnancy loss and the concept that it can be downright hazardous to ascribe blanket morality to difficult and highly specific medical choices.� so can everybody shut up about abortion please?