SNP MP Angela Crawley is arguing for paid leave for women and their partners in instances of miscarriage before 24 weeks. Currently, women and couples who lose a child before 24 weeks are not entitled to paid leave.

Ms. Crawley introduced a private members’ bill in June, now set to be debated in December. Her bill wants to grant the legal right to take three days paid leave if the pregnancy ends in miscarriage before 24 weeks.

In April 2020, paid parental leave in the event of miscarriage after 24 weeks was implemented – but not before 24 weeks, which Crawley’s addition to current legislation seeks to address, recognising that the death of an unborn child is a loss and tragedy at any time during pregnancy. 

Sally Thompson, 32, who has suffered nine miscarriages, has described such loss.

“It doesn’t take long to get attached”, she said. “As soon as you kind of see the two lines or ‘pregnant’ on the test, you don’t think of a ball of cells, you think of the baby that’s going to come in nine months.”

Although Sally was entitled to sick leave, one employer fired her after an extended amount of time off due to miscarriage.

Crawley has also received “tonnes and tonnes of correspondence on this issue from fathers, from mothers and from families who have experienced miscarriage.

“They have outlined that, in most cases, there was a degree of stigma or shame to experiencing a miscarriage.”

SPUC comment

A SPUC spokesperson said: “The absence of compassion and sympathy for parents who suffer miscarriage goes hand in hand with a brutal abortion culture that refuses to recognise the innate humanity and personhood of the unborn, especially those under 24 weeks.

“But every unborn child is just as precious as any other, at whatever age of gestation – they all matter.

“Dismissing a parent’s loss and grief for a baby that died less than 24 weeks into pregnancy is so lacking in compassion that it is brutal.”

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