Meghan McCain Announces Heartbreaking Miscarriage, Uses Tragedy To Share Pro-Life Message
Meghan McCain, the conservative pundit and a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” opened up Friday about a miscarriage she recently suffered.
In an Op-Ed for The New York Times titled, “What I Learned From My Miscarriage,” McCain recalls participating in a photo shoot for an upcoming magazine cover story about the show.
“I should have been proud. I knew my father would have been proud,” she wrote, referring to her father, the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. “I look back at those pictures now, and I see a woman hiding her shock and sorrow. I am posed for the camera, looking stern and strong, representing my fellow conservative women across the country. But inside, I am dying.”
“Inside, my baby is dying.”
McCain said her doctor confirmed that she had miscarried the same day as the photo shoot.
“I missed a few days of work. It wasn’t many, but given the job I have, it was enough to spark gossip about why I would be away from ‘The View,'” McCain wrote. “This was not supposed to be public knowledge. I have had my share of public grief and public joy. I wish this grief — the grief of a little life begun and then lost — could remain private.”
“I am not hiding anymore. My miscarriage was a horrendous experience and I would not wish it upon anyone.”
She went on to note that while miscarriages are relatively common, the subject still “carries so much cultural taboo.”
That’s because unborn babies, the pro-life McCain suggested, are alive.
“We feel sorrow and we weep because our babies were real,” she wrote. “They were conceived, and they lived, fully human and fully ours — and then they died.”
“They deserve to be spoken of, shared and mourned. These children, shockingly small, shockingly helpless, entirely the work of our love and our humanity, are children.”
McCain, who is married to The Federalist co-founder Ben Domenech, said she found out she was pregnant months ago, and soon started wondering, “How am I going to be pregnant with everyone watching?”
But McCain had people she could turn to for support.
“I was prepared in the circle of women to whom I could turn for advice, for support, for love,” she wrote. “Then it all ended — as our child ended.”
McCain said she is now faced with the question, “Why?”
“Why was this light and joy held before us, and then the world where this child drew breath cast into shadow?” she wrote. “Why was an innocent life created in the image of God and then abruptly snuffed out?:
McCain said she blamed herself, but soon realized it wasn’t her fault.
“Fault and blame are not at work here. When Job demanded answers of God, God reminded him: ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand,'” she wrote, citing the Biblical book of Job.
“I do not understand. Life and death are beyond our power,” she wrote. “This miscarriage has reminded me of that truth. And it has reminded me of one other truth: Love is within our power.”
McCain emphasized the love that she will always have for her unborn child.
“I had a miscarriage. I loved my baby, and I always will. To the end of my days I will remember this child — and whatever children come will not obscure that,” she wrote. “I have love for my child. I have love for all the women who, like me, were briefly in the sisterhood of motherhood, hoping, praying and nursing joy within us, until the day the joy was over.”
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