Meghan Markle has spoken candidly about how her own experiences with motherhood and miscarrying have influenced her perspective on the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
In an interview with Vogue published on 28 June, the Duchess of Sussex sat down with feminist icon Gloria Steinem to condemn the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade – the landmark ruling which legalised abortion throughout the US nearly 50 years ago.
When asked by American journalist Jessica Yellin what emotions the reversal of Roe v Wade brings up for her, Meghan shared that she feels “fortunate” to have been able to have her two children – Archie Harrison, three, and Lilibet Diana, one.
“I know what it feels like to have a connection to what is growing inside of your body,” she said. “What happens with our bodies is so deeply personal, which can also lead to silence and stigma, even though so many of us deal with personal health crises.”
“I know what miscarrying feels like, which I’ve talked about publicly. The more that we normalise conversation about the things that affect our lives and bodies, the more people are going to understand how necessary it is to have protections in place,” she added.
In November 2020, the duchess revealed in a moving New York Times essay that she had suffered a miscarriage that summer. Meghan recalled a morning in July 2020 when she was changing her son Archie’s diaper that she felt a “sharp cramp.”
“After changing his diaper, I felt a sharp cramp,” she wrote. "I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right. I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.
“Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” Meghan described, as she praised the women before her who had opened up about their miscarriages too.
Since sharing her story two years ago, the duchess has received an outpouring of support and appreciation for opening up about her miscarriage. Now, Meghan believes the same support should be given to women in the wake of the Roe v Wade reversal.
“This is about women’s physical safety. It’s also about economic justice, individual autonomy, and who we are as a society,” Meghan told Vogue. “Nobody should be forced to make a decision they do not want to make, or is unsafe, or puts their own life in jeopardy. Frankly, whether it’s a woman being put in an unthinkable situation, a woman not ready to start a family, or even a couple who deserve to plan their family in a way that makes the most sense for them, it’s about having a choice.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Meghan called upon men to be vocal during this moment, as she described her husband Prince Harry’s “guttural” reaction to the Supreme Court ruling.
“My husband and I talked about that a lot over the past few days,” she said, adding, “He’s a feminist too.”
“And his reaction last week was guttural, like mine,” Meghan told Yellin, after Steinem “testified” she had known Prince Harry as a staunch advocate for “people’s rights”.
The joint interview between Meghan Markle and Gloria Steinem comes less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a Mississippi case, which challenged a state law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The case – Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – was a direct challenge to the precedent established by Roe v Wade in 1973, and reaffirmed by 1992’s Planned Parenthood v Casey.
The decision marks a stark reversal of abortion protections throughout the country. Now, millions of Americans will be forced to carry pregnancies to term or travel hundreds of miles to states where abortion services are protected.
