The RIGHT To Close and to Mourn by Julia Bueno

"I am a psychotherapist specializing in pregnancy loss. I could not have predicted how my work would buttress my belief that a woman’s desperate desire for her pregnancy to end in a live birth is as equally valid and honorable as the next woman’s choice to end hers. The “baby” lost,  is one that lived in her own mind, the one that she forged a profound relationship with that possibly, probably, involved love. It by no means follows that I believe  every pregnancy creates a “baby” or indeed a legal person that needs protecting by law.  I have learned to make room for myriad interpretations of a pregnancy, as each will be tethered to its own meaning.  Each time I listen to a woman’s thinking about her pregnancy, I learn what it meant to her, and so, what her relationship to her unborn was. Like miscarriage, “abortion” is a term that describes a potentially vast range of experiences.'