Nicola Sturgeon Reveals Baby Loss

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has revealed that she experienced a miscarriage in 2011, when she was Deputy First Minister.

By discussing her miscarriage for the first time in a new book, Sturgeon has commented that she hopes to bring about awareness of miscarriage and challenge the various assumptions about women, careers and family. In the book, Scottish National Party Leaders by Mandy Rhodes, Sturgeon discusses her miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy, at the age of 40.

Along with extracts of the book, Sturgeon released the following statement:

“This was obviously a painful experience for Peter and I and while Mandy has known about it for some time, she has always respected our decision not to talk about it publicly.  I gave her the go ahead to make reference to it now in the hope that it might challenge some of the assumptions and judgements that are still made about women – especially in politics – who don’t have children…

There are many reasons why women don’t have children. Some of us simply don’t want to, some of us worry about the impact on our career – and there is still so much to do, through better childcare, more progressive working practices and more enlightened attitudes, to make sure we don’t feel we have to choose.  And sometimes, for whatever reason, having a baby just doesn’t happen – no matter how much we might want it to.”

She furthered: “For me, as for many women, all of these things have been true at different times of my life – the point is that judgements and assumptions shouldn’t be made about what are personal choices and experiences.”

For more on this story and photo credit see BBC article here