A Democratic lawmaker spoke on the House floor this week about her personal traumatic experience with miscarriage to advocate her amendment to a spending bill that would direct the National Institutes of Health to study strategies for improving pain management during miscarriages.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., told colleagues that she and her husband recently lost a pregnancy “after 11 weeks of hope of bringing a new member into the family. Miscarriage is hard but when your body doesn’t let go of a miscarriage, it gets harder. After several weeks of bleeding and mourning the loss of our pregnancy, my doctor made clear that future pregnancy could be much more difficult if I didn’t take medication to expel the retained miscarriage.”
Gluesenkamp Perez said she was told this medication “would be about as painful as a regular period, maybe a little stronger cramping.” But when she took the medicine on Sunday, she said “the pain was worse than the pain I experienced during labor and delivery of my son four years ago. I was not even advised to take this medication when my son was out of the house. He saw and heard things that he should never have had to.”
“Between 10% and 20% of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, with most occurring within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
Gluesenkamp Perez condemned the standard prescription for pain medication after a miscarriage, which is an “over-the-counter pain medicine, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), or naproxen (Aleve) for cramps,” according to Kaiser Permanente.