The View co-host Meghan McCain opened up about the miscarriage she recently suffered in a new op-ed with The New York Times, calling the experience “horrendous.”
In the article, McCain recalls how just a few weeks ago, she posed for a NYT cover story about the ABC talk show in what should have been a “moment of triumph.” Unfortunately, those same photos now conjure feelings of sorrow for McCain, as she learned the same day that she was miscarrying.
“I blamed myself. Perhaps it was wrong of me to choose to be a professional woman, working in a high-pressure, high-visibility, high-stress field, still bearing the burden of the recent loss of my father and facing on top of that the arrows that come with public life,” she wrote.
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She continued, saying that she blamed her age, her personality, and more, and that what followed “was a deep opening of shame.”
McCain acknowledged just how common miscarriages are, noting that an estimate of one in 10 to one in four pregnancies end in miscarriages. She explained that she initially wanted to grieve in private, but given how many women suffer in silence out of fear of the stigma that comes when they do share, she felt compelled to tell her story.
“We deserve the opportunity to speak openly of [our children], to share what they were and to mourn,” McCain wrote. “More important, they deserve to be spoken of, shared, and mourned.”
McCain credits her faith for getting her through. She also says that she now finds comfort knowing that her unborn child, a daughter, is in heaven with her father, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018 from cancer.
“When my father passed, I took refuge in the hope that someday we would be united in the hereafter,” she wrote. “I still imagine that moment, even as I trust that a loving God will see it happen. Now I imagine it a bit differently.”