This week I held an Adjournment debate in Parliament on the topic of miscarriage support.

The current system is failing so many people. The Lancet’s 2021 series on miscarriage, published in April this year, has shone a light on the scale of the problem. The report’s authors call for a “comprehensive overhaul of medical care and advice offered to women who have miscarriages”, proposing a graded model of care, where women receive care after every miscarriage. This would be a substantial move away from the current fragmented system of care, which has left so many unable to access support.

But to truly readdress this crisis, it isn’t just care pathways we need to reform. We must shift the whole narrative about miscarriage, and challenge the idea, which is ideological not evidence based, that miscarriage, like other women’s reproductive health issues, should be managed with minimal medical intervention. In other words, no woman should ever again be told to “just try again”. Only by doing this, will miscarriage research receive the attention, and level of funding, it deserves.

National miscarriage data should also be recorded, like we already do for stillbirth, premature birth and neonatal death, to not only improve our understanding but to spare the pain of having to, in the case of my constituent, explain to five different doctors that they have had multiple miscarriages, as they weren’t recorded anywhere in her hospital notes.

These are the findings, and solutions, I put to the Minister for Women’s Health, Nadine Dorries, during my adjournment debate today.

The government must step in and use their Women’s Health Strategy to fix the gaping holes in care, so that the days of leaving women to suffer in silence are well and truly a thing of the past. A re-focus on miscarriage is desperately needed, and long overdue.

Thank you so so much to everyone for the kind words and messages of support. Most of all thank you to all of the women who have shared their stories with me & to Tommy’s, Sands, The Miscarriage Association and all the other amazing groups campaigning for change.

You can watch my full speech below and read the Government’s response here.