There are gaps between what health care providers say or intend to say and what patients hear, and certain words carry negative connotations and the baggage of past experience. For women who have miscarriages or challenges with conception, the clinical encounter is often rife with language that frames their bodies as failures, seemingly inept. “Fertility failure,” “failure to progress” and “failure to conceive” are important examples, as are descriptions of women’s pelvises as “inadequate,” cervixes “incompetent” or “insufficient” and cervical mucus as “hostile.” Jargon that describes women’s bodies as inherently and necessarily reproductive perpetuates the blame, stigma and sense of failure associated with infertility and works to disempower women.
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