Elisabeth Borne announced the lifting of the waiting days in the event of a miscarriage on Wednesday. The system must enter into force no later than January 1, 2024.
The government intends to lift a taboo on a common phenomenon: miscarriages. One in ten women experiences one in her lifetime. The Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, announces it in the columns of the magazine She Wednesday, March 1. They will now be entitled to sick leave without a waiting day in the event of a natural termination of pregnancy.
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The goal is to give women the opportunity to physically and psychologically recover from a miscarriage. They will be able to stop working for the necessary time in agreement with their doctor without deduction from salary as is usually the case. During a sick leave, the first three days are not paid. The government wants to lift the brake that could prevent women from taking the time to recover. The system must come into force on January 1, 2024 at the latest and will cost eight million euros from the social security budget.
The measure will be officially announced on March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Day. 200,000 pregnancies a year, or one in four pregnancies, end in the first five months. It was a test for Flora who will soon be a mother for the first time. “I am seven and a half months pregnant and I hope the pregnancy will go to term this time”she says.
The feeling of loneliness and guilt
This is already the third pregnancy of this specialized educator. The first stopped in September 2021, a week after a positive test. An event that she trivialized, she says, but she suffered a second in January 2022 at two and a half months. “It was really a roller coaster, she says, because I was really going there with a gun, telling myself that everything was fine and that it was over”. Before being sent to the emergency room for additional examinations, then undergoing curettage, an operation which consists of aspirating the pocket and the fetus. “At first what you feel is a lot of guilt: ‘Why us? What did we do wrong?’
“It’s something quite traumatic, psychologically painful. We found ourselves a little alone.”
Loneliness and physical reactions, are a reality incompatible with a return to work describes the author Judith Acquien of the collective Fausse layer, true lived. “The bleeding is enormous, they ask to wear maternity pads five centimeters thick”, she explains. She also mentions “the contractions, the evacuations of enormous and painful blood clots”, potentially “evacuation of the embryo when the latter has not been evacuated by surgery”. “It’s extremely heavy”summarizes Judith Acquien. “This lifting of the deficiency is a recognition of the bodies and what they undergo, it is excellent news.”
Psychological support for the couple
The partners will not be able to benefit from this measure, but it is the couple of parents faced with miscarriages that the government intends to support psychologically with a bill to this effect brought by the Modem MP Sandrine Josso and examined at the Assembly on March 8. Anxiety, depression, nearly one in three women suffer from post-traumatic stress after a miscarriage. So many untreated symptoms. In 2023, the government intends to set up support to better train health professionals “with the regional health agency of all the territories of France”. The goal will be to “develop a network within all territories to allow couples who request it and who are really in need to be accompanied in an ideal way.” This psychological support may be prescribed by midwives.