I am not all that familiar with the causes or nature of natural miscarriages.
Some very basic research shows that most miscarriages occur very early in pregnancy. (>80% are in the first 12 weeks.) At 12 weeks a fetus is the size of a plum (and the rate decreases substantially over time - so most miscarried fetuses are surely much, much smaller). At that scale, I’m not fully confident that science would be able to conjure up a solution in the near future. If the concern is with zygotes that do not implant, I’m not sure what one would suggest as a method of “forcing” implantation.
These arguments, rightly or wrongly, obviously feed into public opinion, whereby abortion within the first trimester is considered much more “tolerable”, as a compromise, than later term abortions. In Western Europe, as far as I understand, 12 weeks is the standard. It is a compromise between a woman’s assertion of autonomy over her body and the fact that a first trimester pregnancy is already so uncertain that most couples wisely do not share the news of their pregnancy until after the first trimester has already been completed.
As an aside, this also has a bearing on the theological question as to whether a first trimester fetus has an immortal soul. Why would God “allow” such a high rate of conceived human life to miscarry within the first 3 months? Nature is profligate – our very sperm count is profligate – yet, from a theological perspective, this has a bearing on nothing less than the problem of evil (“Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil.”–Annie Dillard). If all of these were ensouled human beings – from the moment of conception – there would be literally billions of souls in heaven (hopefully in heaven; they were not baptized, obviously) who had never drawn breath on this earth. And what does this do to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body? This doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which often is taken quite literally, would have to be viewed more metaphorically. Then again, it arguably already needs to be taken less literally, in cases where one’s physical body has been obliterated. I suppose one could envision that, at the time of resurrection, the individual becomes fully grown, even if it had never fully developed in the first place.
the pro-life lobby started pouring funding into research to prevent as many miscarriages as possible, the world would understandably be a little puzzled. I’m not even sure how that would work in a world that doesn’t agree that abortion and contraception are wrong. There would have to be consensus that any fertilized egg is worth saving once it has come into being, but while contraception and abortion are still allowed, the research would be impossible to apply since half the country is actively trying to prevent and destroy those fertilized eggs.
That’s fair, I think. Failure of a zygote to implant, the spontaneous ending of a pregnancy that a woman was never aware of in the first place, is at a comparatively microscopic level; we practically would need to have control over molecular biochemistry, perhaps a level of control that would be dangerous to have in the first place.
However, it would be absolutely imperative to support prenatal care for women, as well as post-partum care. Inexplicably, the United States is said to have a higher infant mortality rate (5.9 per 1,000 births) than Cuba (4.6 per 1,000 births); France (3.3); Germany (3.4); Italy (3.3); the United Kingdom (4.5).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate
I’m assuming that babies born to the poor are at the greatest risk, so any consistent pro-life position would need to be particularly solicitous towards the pregnancies of the poor and the indigent; addressing wealth inequality or, at least, improving access to affordable health care would all be top priorities.
It’s unfortunate that access to prenatal care for poorer women is, in practice, “bundled” with access to birth control and abortion, as it becomes a lose/lose situation from the perspective of a pro-lifer – defund Planned Parenthood because it facilitates access to birth control and abortion, even if it also facilitates access to prenatal care (including pregnancy testing). Potentially, you are looking at fewer abortions but a higher level of: cases of infant mortality; miscarriages; babies born with health problems, due to inadequate prenatal care or prenatal counseling. And that’s assuming the woman doesn’t procure the abortion illegally, or attempt to self-perform it.
