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Dottoré!

Miscarriage And Motherhood, When Pregnancy Is A Battlefield

"There’s still a pulse," they told me, surprisingly.

Miscarriage And Motherhood, When Pregnancy Is A Battlefield
Mariateresa Fichele

They call it 'recurrent abortion.' Your test shows up positive but then you end up losing the pregnancy in the first few weeks. I've lost count of how many times this happened to me.

I do remember the last time, though. I was eight weeks pregnant. I got up one morning and found myself in the usual pool of blood. I was so used to it that I didn't say anything to anyone. I called a cab and asked the driver to take me to the ER.


The usual routine: There, they give you an ultrasound to determine whether or not a D&C procedure is necessary.

"There’s still a pulse," they told me, surprisingly. “But it will be a long battle.”

Nine months of solitude

Nine long months of rest. Day after day, being alert to every little sign of my body. Constant terror, so all-consuming that you don't even dare think about that child you carry in your belly. You can't cherish the idea of the baby, you can't feel it as being a part of you, because that's the only way you can protect yourself from an eventual loss.

After nine months, the warrior was born.

I stared at him strangely. Is this my son? For nine months I had not allowed myself the chance of loving him.

This kind of fight

For some, becoming a mother, more than a gift, represents the victorious end to a long battle.

I wish success to anyone who is fighting this kind of fight.

Parenthood should be denied to no man, woman, or anyone else who may desire it — for nature may be adverse, but the judgment and prejudice of others should never be.

Learn more about Worldcrunch's exclusive Dottoré! series here.

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Geopolitics

Journalist Spy, Subversive 13-Year-Old: Law And Order In Totalitarian Russia

Even beyond the bloodshed of its war in Ukraine, lesser acts of aggression by the state are a clear expression of the intentions of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Photo of an anti-war drawing by a 13-year-old girl

Incriminated drawing by Maria, 13

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

They are "minor” incidents compared to the bloody frontline near Bakhmut, or the missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities. But these same incidents say a lot about what is going on in Russian society, behind the relatively normal facade that has been preserved for a year.

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Two arrests occurred Thursday, one of a Russian citizen whose story is one of aberrant cruelty; the other of an American journalist turned hostage in the proxy confrontation between Moscow and Washington.

Aleksei Moskalyov is a single father of a 13-year-old girl, Maria, a status which is in itself considered abnormal in Russian society. But above all, Maria was taken away from her father and placed in an orphanage for having drawn an anti-war picture at school. Her own teacher reported her to the authorities.

The father was sentenced to two years in prison for having criticized the Russian army. He fled, but was arrested in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, probably betrayed by the activation of his cell phone. He risks an even harsher sentence, and likely will not see his daughter again for years.

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