For years, miscarriage has been a hushed subject in American life—shrouded in silence by both culture and the medical establishment. Most people, unless they have endured it, know almost nothing about what happens or what help exists. Lane Koch, vice president of Students for Life Action, wants to change that.
Fifteen years ago, Koch and her husband were overjoyed to learn they were expecting their first child. They snapped photos of the pregnancy test, brainstormed names, planned a nursery, and started a baby registry. But at around 13 weeks, a routine check revealed dangerously low hormone levels. A week later, her doctor told her she was miscarrying.
Koch had deliberately chosen a Catholic hospital because it does not perform abortions. Yet her doctor still mentioned she could go elsewhere for one. As Christians, Koch and her husband prayed for God’s will. At the next appointment, there was no heartbeat. The doctor pressed for a dilation and curettage—a procedure to remove the deceased baby—but Koch refused, hoping for a mistake. She was given two weeks to wait at home.
No one in the doctor’s office offered guidance on what to do with her child’s remains. Koch later learned that nonprofits provide dignified burial options, but at the time, she had no idea. She ended up discarding her baby’s body in the trash—a moment of profound grief she still regrets. “If a doctor in my Catholic hospital could offer me abortion resources, she could—and should—have offered resources to nonprofits and ministries that help mothers facing infant loss,” Koch writes.
Koch’s friend, who also miscarried, told her that women are often left with no choice but to flush the remains. That torturous reality underscores the need for the Bereaved Parents’ Rights Act, a bill Koch’s organization, SFLAction, is working on with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.). Co-sponsors are lining up. The legislation would require grieving parents to receive information about available support—like burial kits and counseling—rather than being left to navigate the aftermath alone.
Koch is blunt about the systemic neglect: “For far too long, the mainstream culture and medical establishment have turned a blind eye to this matter. Worse, many have intentionally conflated and confused the fundamentally different medical realities of ‘abortion’ and ‘miscarriage.’” A miscarriage is the unintended natural loss of a child who has died in the womb; an elective abortion is the deliberate termination of a living child. Equating the two, she argues, taints the grief of mothers and harms women.
All 50 states already require care to protect the mother’s life, but Koch says that when a child is lost, medical practitioners should also be required to offer dignified burial and miscarriage kits. She believes that if burial solutions were standard, postpartum depression would be far less common.
Ten to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. These mothers deserve support, Koch insists. “Society constantly focuses on offering resources to women who choose abortion. It is time we do the same for women who choose to let their preborn children live but lose them anyway.”
As the debate over reproductive rights intensifies, Koch’s story highlights a gap that crosses party lines: the need for compassion and practical help for parents who lose a child before birth. The proposed bill may not end the culture wars, but it could offer a measure of dignity to those grieving in silence.
