History Main / ConvenientMiscarriage

In television, pregnancies are more likely to end in a recognized miscarriage than they do in real life. What's a female character to do when she discovers she is pregnant? It would not be too controversial for television writers to suggest an abortion, but it would be if she were actually to have one, since GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion. In the end, she'll make her mind up to have the baby, if it's not what she decided ought to happen in the first place, but it will not happen, because [[StatusQuoIsGod the plot of an ongoing series would change too much]] if her character had to be rewritten to include raising an infant (to say nothing of creating a new character from scratch and finding suitable child actors for it, and remember that this is a completely irrevocable change). So the writers employ the ResetButton by having her miscarry, often by falling down a flight of stairs. This trope is limited to serial works, where reverting to a status quo is more important than advancing a plot. Therefore, miscarriages are less common in non-serial works, and even when they do happen it's not a ResetButton. A common variation is for a character (usually a main character's girlfriend) to ''say'' that they've miscarried, only for TheReveal to come later that the baby was born, perfectly fine. Whether or not this gets picked up again depends on how tied the writers are to the status quo. More severe critics cite the trope as a cheap source of drama for female characters, whose most important dilemmas always end up as highlighting their femininity.

* Page image: Lilah in ''[[Webcomic/CtrlAltDel Ctrl+Alt+Del]]'' had a miscarriage which was supposedly caused by her immune system detecting the unborn child as a foreign object, which ''does'' happen in real life.

* A variant in the Season 9 comics of ''ComicBook/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': Buffy discovers she's pregnant. She considers the possibility of raising a child as a slayer, and ultimately decides [[spoiler:on having an abortion. But, before she can go through with it, it's revealed that Buffy had her mind transplanted into a robot's body, and she was never actually pregnant in the first place]].

In television, pregnancies are more likely to end in a recognized miscarriage than they do in real life. What's a female character to do when she discovers she is pregnant? It would not be too controversial for television writers to suggest an abortion, but it would be if she were actually to have one, since GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion. In the end, she'll make her mind up to have the baby, if it's not what she decided ought to happen in the first place.

But it won't happen, because [[StatusQuoIsGod the plot of an ongoing series would change too much]] if her character had to be rewritten to include raising an infant (to say nothing of creating a new character from scratch and finding suitable child actors for it, and remember that this is a completely irrevocable change). So the writers employ the ResetButton by having her miscarry, often by falling down a flight of stairs. This trope is limited to serial works, where reverting to a status quo is more important than advancing a plot. Therefore, miscarriages are less common in non-serial works, and even when they do happen it's not a ResetButton. A common variation is for a character (usually a main character's girlfriend) to ''say'' that they've miscarried, only for TheReveal to come later that the baby was born, perfectly fine. Whether or not this gets picked up again depends on how tied the writers are to the status quo. More severe critics cite the trope as a cheap source of drama for female characters, whose most important dilemmas always end up as highlighting their femininity.

* Page image: Lilah in ''[[Webcomic/CtrlAltDel Ctrl+Alt+Del]]'' had a miscarriage which was supposedly caused by her immune system detecting the unborn child as a foreign object, which ''does'' happen in real life. [[{{Narm}} This would have been particularly dramatic]] [[CerebusSyndrome had the comic not been mostly light-hearted and comedic up until then]], and [[MoodWhiplash had the author not broken up the story with regular game jokes]]. Plus, at the end of the arc, Lilah acted like her having a HeroicBSOD over losing her child was just crazy bitching.

[[caption-width-right:295:They're at a [[MemeticMutation loss]] for words after what just happened.]]

* ''Series/NYPDBlue'': Diane miscarries her child with Bobby. (He later meets him in the afterlife.) Another time, Danny has a crisis when he gets his girlfriend pregnant, but she has a miscarriage at the end of the episode. (''Entertainment Weekly'' complained at the time that it was a cop-out way to end that storyline.)

* Dasha miscarries between the second and third seasons of ''Series/NineteenFortyOne'', averting a great deal of personal and romantic drama. Perhaps justified, as it is wartime and she's suffering privation and danger running for her life in the remote Russian wilderness from Nazis.

Keep in mind that this may be TruthInTelevision; about 15% of ''known'' pregnancies end in a miscarriage. Some studies, which use the most sophisticated and sensitive tests for pregnancy to detect it almost immediately, long before most commercial tests or the woman is likely to realize she's pregnant, indicate that ''70 to 80%'' of successful fertilized eggs will miscarry or fail to implant on the uterine wall in the first place. Sometimes the woman also wanted an abortion -- but in most cases, the woman didn't even know she was pregnant; the fertilized egg simply fails to implant (or disintegrates upon implantation) and she either has a perfectly normal period or one that is slightly late and slightly heavier than normal.

* The ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' comic ''Batman: Son of the Demon'' uses the variation. Batman joins up with his WellIntentionedExtremist enemy ComicBook/RasAlGhul, marries his daughter, ComicBook/TaliaAlGhul, and gets her pregnant. Talia decides that to defend her and the baby would hold Batman back from his mission, and fakes the miscarriage; the last we see is their son, in an orphanage, holding the necklace Bruce gave to Talia. This story was [[{{Retcon}} retroactively declared]] an {{Elseworld}} and then {{retcon}}ned right back to being canon years later, when Talia presented Bruce with his son [[MeaningfulName Damian]], now 10 years old.

* Nocturne from ''Comicbook/{{Exiles}}'' who not only lost her child between issues but did any grieving there as well. One issue the father is put into a coma while punching out Galacticus and has to be left behind when the Exiles move on. The next issue someone asks her about why she's not showing yet and she informs them that she 'lost it 5 worlds ago and She's glad because what sort of crappy situation is this to bring a child into?'. The baby isn't mentioned again until the father comes out of his coma and the second thing Nocturne says to him is 'I lost the baby' (the first is "You're Alive!" In between, it was strongly implied that she had actually either gotten an abortion, or used her powers to perform the abortion herself.

** On the other hand, in the ''Gensokyo Diaries'' tie in, with Sakuya, who pursued a romance and ends up unknowingly pregnant but miscarries, finding out she's pregnant only after going to the doctor over the symptoms there of.

* In ''Film/HighCrimes'', Tom and Claire have been trying for a baby for a while and Claire finally gets pregnant, but miscarries the baby following an ambush attack on her car. [[spoiler:In a TwistEnding, Tom turns out to have been the killer all along after Claire spent the whole movie trying to exonerate him of the massacre of village peasants in El Salvador. Tom is killed by the El Salvadorian witness to the crimes]]. This means that Claire [[spoiler:doesn't have to raise a baby alone and also doesn't have to raise a baby who will remind her of her husband's crimes and betrayal, in a bittersweet way.]]

* In ''Film/AKidLikeJake'', Alex and Greg get pregnant with their second child. Due to the stress of their son's behavior, Alex ends up miscarrying. This leads to a fight which lets Alex and Greg vent out their frustration, which in the end leads them to a mutual conclusion that their son Jake should see a therapist.

* ''Literature/AliceSeries'' has Pamela get pregnant by her boyfriend in ''Almost Alice''. None of the girls really discuss options because they are too freaked out about this sudden drop of reality and responsibility, until Alice pretty much forces Pamela to at least tell her mother. Her mother discusses options with Pamela, including abortion or adoption, but Pamela can't deal with it and just wishes she ''wasn't'' pregnant to begin with. When she's about four weeks along, she ends up having a convenient miscarriage that took all decision-making from her.

* ''Literature/ABoyMadeOfBlocks'': A year ago, Emma ended up pregnant from a fling. Her miscarriage came as a relief, since she was living in a beach hut at the time. But it also affected her so badly that she spent two days crying and [[IWantMyMommy wanting her mum to take care of her]].

* ''Literature/AirAwakens'': In book five [[spoiler:Vhalla]] does not even know she's pregnant, she thinks her lack of periods is due to insufficient food, exhaustion and stress. And then she [[spoiler: makes a trade with Vi]] and as a result loses the baby. Her friend Elecia, who deals with the aftermath as a healer, claims it was a blessing in disguise, since [[spoiler: Vhalla and Aldrik]] haven't wed yet so the child would have been suspected to be a bastard.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* Teresa in ''Series/TheOC'' uses the variation; she doesn't miscarry, but claims she did so that Ryan will go back to the O.C.
* Subverted in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}''. JD goes from California to Tacoma to see Kim's ultrasound, only to leave when she tells him she's miscarried; the episode closes on her gynecologist telling her she has a healthy baby boy. This ends up becoming very important later on in the season's main plot.

* ''Series/GreysAnatomy'''s Cristina Yang unequivocally wanted an abortion in the first season, but never got to go through with it due to falling ill from her ectopic pregnancy (which, [[RuleOfDrama of course]], was when the father found out about it, after he dumped her in a previous episode for not [[MakeUpOrBreakUp letting him into her life enough]] just as she was about to tell him about the pregnancy). When she gets pregnant later, she doesn't miscarry so she goes through with the abortion.

* In the recent short-lived ''Series/BionicWoman'' remake, the same car accident that leads to Jamie becoming bionic also causes her to miscarry. The offhandedness of it has lead to some fairly… [[{{squick}} interesting]] [=WMGs=].

* A strange example ''Series/{{Nashville}}'': Starlet Juliette Barnes has an unexpected pregnancy (that coincided with the real-life actress's pregnancy) and carries it to term. She thought the baby was a one-night stand but the father was actually her boyfriend Avery. Several seasons later, up and comer Scarlett becomes estranged from long time boyfriend Gunnar and gets pregnant. This time the baby is not Gunnar's but her one night stand's, and this time she miscarries later on.

* Creator/KateySagal's [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life pregnancy was written into a season]] of ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', but the baby was stillborn in a third-term miscarriage. [[RealLifeWritesThePlot To avoid the trauma of an infant on-set so soon after her loss]], Peg's pregnancy was made AllJustADream, and Sagal's subsequent pregnancies had Peg chasing after her parents, and thus not on-screen, to prevent it happening again..

* Kirsty did this on ''Series/HomeAndAway'': first she lied she was pregnant, then to weasel out of it she lied she miscarried, and then she found she was having a baby for real, and then she miscarried for real. (Doubly convenient since she needed a kidney transplant but couldn't bring herself to have an abortion.) Several years later (having had a full term pregnancy in the meantime), it happened to her ''again'': She pretended to try for a baby but kept taking the pill, admitted she didn't want a baby, got pregnant anyway, considered an abortion but realised she wanted the baby, then had a miscarriage.
** An awkward case with Sam Holden: Having just undergone a FaceHeelTurn and killed a criminal who was blackmailing her, she conveniently discovered she was pregnant just as husband Jack was about to report her to the police, then suffered a convenient miscarriage during an argument. Not long after [[DeathOfTheHypotenuse she committed suicide]] in a failed attempt to frame [[DieForOurShip Jack and Martha]].

** Since then, abortions have become so commonplace in UK drama and especially soaps that they barely cause any controversy at all. One [[{{Squick}} squicky]] example from the last months of ''Family Affairs'' (which probably avoided controversy on the grounds it was Britain's least watched soap opera and no-one noticed): A 14-year-old girl became pregnant by a boyfriend that the viewers [[TheGhost never even saw]], had an abortion the following week without her parents even knowing she was pregnant (although they found out immediately after), and was promptly PutOnABus.[[note]]Having an abortion while underage without parental knowledge is legal, because having an abortion is probably a better decision than becoming a mother below school-leaving age, so it protects girls from parents who might otherwise punish their daughters for their decision. Such an abortion can also be no-questions-asked, with exceptions, so that girls don't have to worry about being forced to turn in their boyfriends for statutory rape.[[/note]]
** Coronation Street did play this straight in 1988 when Bet Gilroy discovered she was pregnant much to her and husband Alec's shock (mostly due to their ages; Bet was in her late forties while Alec was approaching his mid-fifties). No sooner did the couple start to come round to the idea of being parents when Bet miscarried, and after a brief period of mourning the couple picked themselves up and carried on (the entire storyline taking place over the course of just three episodes).

* Subverted in ''Series/{{Packed to the Rafters}}''. When Rachel finds out she's pregnant to her drug-addicted ex-boyfriend, she has an abortion rather than have his baby, a decision her ScrewPolitenessImASenior grandfather gives her an awkward lecture about.

%%*** The things some people will do to shirk responsibility. '''''YEAAAAAHHHHH!!!'''''

* Somewhat subverted on ''Series/TheSecretLifeOfTheAmericanTeenager'', since [[spoiler:Adrian and Ben]] wanted their daughter and were devastated when she was a stillborn. But it was still pretty convenient for the writers.
* In season four of ''Series/UglyBetty'', [[spoiler:Hilda]] had one of these only a few episodes after discovering her pregnancy. Unlike most examples, however, she does not lose the baby through a traumatic fall down the staircase; instead, she goes in for an ultrasound and learns that the baby died in-utero when the technician can't detect a heart beat.

* Clare on ''Series/{{Degrassi}}''. She became pregnant in the middle of her senior year and intended to keep the baby. But obviously the writers weren't going to have their main character [[GraduateFromTheStory graduate (and therefore leave the show)]] while still pregnant, so she had a late term miscarriage shortly before graduation. In-universe, Clare was absolutely devastated, but the miscarriage did give her an optimistic ending where her future was looking brighter than ever.

* On ''Series/{{Revenge}}'', Charlotte's poorly conceived, entirely unnecessary pregnancy was written out within moments of her first appearance of the next season. Seemed blatant that the writers realized what a terrible idea this was and decided to backpedal.

* ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'': Kelly became pregnant with her and Brandon's child, and after a full episode of coming to terms with it, she lost the baby. Conversely, Kelly's actress, Creator/JennieGarth, however was [[RealLife actually]] pregnant with her first child around the same time (which was [[HideYourPregnancy hidden from the audience]]).
* For a series so heavily concerned with childbirth and the ways it affects people's lives, and tending towards neat endings, ''Series/CallTheMidwife'' could be forgiven for employing this a lot more but in fact it indulges seldom. However one plot line saw a young man's university-place/marrying-his-knocked-up-girlfriend effectively solved by her miscarrying.
* ''Series/ChicagoMed'': April gets pregnant with her relatively new boyfriend Tate's baby. The two quickly become engaged and seem happy to start their family, but have constant fights about whether or not April should be working and how her TB medications affect the baby. Ultimately, April goes to an ultrasound and there is no fetal heartbeat. She and Tate are both crushed and eventually break up since Tate can't get over the idea that her working contributed to the miscarriage and he never wanted a working wife anyway.

* ''Series/TheRanch'': Discussed and deconstructed. Colt gets Heather pregnant at a ''really'' bad time, but they agree to keep the baby and look forward to being parents. However, she miscarries, and both grieve over the loss, but also admit to being kind of relieved, as it solves a lot of problems for them both. They both feel guilty for considering the miscarriage convenient, and while they're both sad, they're not sure if they're sad ''enough''. Heather ultimately concludes that it doesn't matter; regardless of whether they wanted the baby or not, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and now they can move on with their lives.

* ''Series/TheNeighborhood'': The end of the third season into the beginning of the fourth deals with Dave and Gemma wanting another child and Gemma manages to become pregnant. A few episodes in, and she ends up miscarrying the child. To say that she and Dave are devastated would be an understatement.

* Deconstructed in the Irish short film ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0SWYOuoEU Aaron]]''. It's revealed that the protagonist's girlfriend suffered a miscarriage during a TeenPregnancy years ago. The boy is still dealing with the trauma years later, and struggles to find closure from it.

* ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'': Before she was a fast-talking Hollywood agent, Princess Caroline was the Southern-born, starry-eyed daughter of a clingy, alcoholic housekeeper to a wealthy family who owned an answering machine tape empire. In their last year of high school, she has a fling with the wealthy family's son and gets pregnant. Princess Caroline is upset, but her mom is ecstatic, because this means [[HonorableMarriageProposal the boy will have no choice but to marry her before she starts to show, as to avoid a scandal for his affluent family]]. This makes her mom happy, knowing that Princess Caroline will become rich and never leave home. Then, Princess Caroline has a miscarriage, meaning the son no longer has any obligation to marry her, allowing her to set herself free from her toxic mother, go to college in California, and follow her own dreams.

** It's never actually made clear if Charlotte did have a miscarriage (or, at the very least, a chemical pregnancy[[note]]Which is basically a very early miscarriage that happens before anything can be seen on an ultrasound, usually occurring around the fourth or fifth week[[/note]]). It's possible that Charlotte was never actually pregnant to begin with--if that's true, then she could've had a phantom pregnancy[[note]]Which is where a woman exhibits pregnancy-like symptoms when she's not actually pregnant--it's more common in animals, and in humans, it tends to be more psychological than physical[[/note]] and/or had misread/done her at-home pregnancy test incorrectly[[note]]In the episode, the test turned out blue, and Charlotte claimed that meant she was pregnant--it's entirely possible that blue actually meant that Charlotte wasn't pregnant or blue meant "inconclusive," or something along those lines[[/note]]. It's also entirely possible that Charlotte simply realized that at-home pregnancy tests aren't always completely accurate, because right after doing the test, she made an appointment with her doctor to have an official pregnancy test done.
[[/folder]]

* ''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk'': Betty Ross got hit with this one due to ExecutiveMeddling; writer Creator/PeterDavid had the story of the birth already plotted out, but editorial vetoed the Hulk having kids. He refused to write the miscarriage himself, and a fill-in author had to do the job instead, having Nightmare kill her and Bruce's unborn baby

* ''Comicbook/IncredibleHulk'': ComicBook/BettyRoss got hit with this one due to ExecutiveMeddling; writer Creator/PeterDavid had the story of the birth already plotted out, but editorial vetoed the Hulk having kids. He refused to write the miscarriage himself, and a fill-in author had to do the job instead.

* In ''[[Fanfic/EyesOnMe If You Ever Cared To Ask]]'', Nyoko turns out to be experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, which almost kills her on her fourteenth birthday when one of her fallopian tubes ruptures and has to be terminated for her sake. The non-viable pregnancy itself is only convenient in a narrative sense. Otherwise, it's considered anything but.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

** A classic example in the ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'' fanfic "[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9820206/1/Choices Choices]]" that has CP Alesha Philips conceiving as a result of her rape. When she decides to keep the baby, DS Matt Devlin offers to step in as the baby's father. When she miscarries it draws them even closer, with Matt outright offering to light a candle, "for ''our'' baby", thus playing this trope twice--not only does Alesha not have to carry her rapist's baby, losing it makes her and Matt realize how much they love each other.

** A classic example in the ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'' fanfic "[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9820206/1/Choices Choices]]" that has CP Alesha Philips conceiving as a result of her rape. When she decides to keep the baby, DS Matt Devlin offers to step in as the baby's father. When she miscarries it draws them even closer, with Matt outright offering to light a candle, "for ''our'' baby", thus playing this trope twice--not only does Alesha not have to carry her rapist's baby, losing it makes she and Matt realize how much they love each other.

* Margaret in ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' gets beaten so severely by her husband (in the first episode) that she loses her baby. Not really to avoid her having children (she already had two); probably more so that Nucky had an incentive to order a hit on Hans, and so that [[spoiler:she and Nucky could get to a sexual relationship that much quicker]].

* In ''Webcomic/HowIBecameYours'' 15-year-old Katara's baby with Zuko is a stillbirth because of a poisoned fruit delivered by [[DesignatedVillain Mai]]. It's supposed to be a MoralEventHorizon for Mai and a dramatic moment for Katara, but it falls flat because [[JerkassHasAPoint Mai had a pretty good reason to do it]] (mainly, political fallout from having a bastard heir) even if it wasn't a ''nice'' one and the fact that all it does for Katara is provide cheap {{Wangst}}.

* Dasha miscarries between the second and third seasons of Series/NineteenFortyOne, averting a great deal of personal and romantic drama. Perhaps justified, as it is wartime and she's suffering privation and danger running for her life in the remote Russian wilderness from Nazis.

* For a series so heavily concerned with childbirth and the ways it affects people's lives, and tending towards neat endings, ''''Series/CallTheMidwife could be forgiven for employing this a lot more but in fact it indulges seldom. However one plot line saw a young man's university-place/marrying-his-knocked-up-girlfriend effectively solved by her miscarrying.

* ''Series/TheRanch'': Discussed and deconstructed. Colt gets Heather pregnant at a ''really'' bad time, and while they agree to keep the baby and look forward to being parents. However, she miscarries, and both grieve over the loss, but also admit to being kind of relieved, as it solves a lot of problems for them both. They both feel guilty for considering the miscarriage convenient, and while they're both sad, they're not sure if they're sad ''enough''. Heather ultimately concludes that it doesn't matter; regardless of whether they wanted the baby or not, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and now they can move on with their lives.

** It's never actually made clear if Charlotte did have a miscarriage (or, at the very least, a checmical pregnancy[[note]]Which is basically a very early miscarriage that happens before anything can be seen on an ultrasound, usually occurring aroudn the fourth or fifth week[[/note]]). It's possible that Charlotte was never actually pregnant to begin with--if that's true, then she could've had a phantom pregnancy[[note]]Which is where a woman exhibits pregnancy-like symptoms when she's not actually pregnant--it's more common in animals, and in humans, it tends to be more psychological than physical[[/note]] and/or had misread/done her at-home pregnancy test incorrectly[[note]]In the episode, the test turned out blue, and Charlotte claimed that meant she was pregnant--it's entirely possible that blue actually meant that Charlotte wasn't pregnant or blue meant "inconclusive," or something along those lines[[/note]]. It's also entirely possible that Charlotte simply realized that at-home pregnancy tests aren't always completely accurate, because right after doing the test, she made an appointment with her doctor to have an official pregnancy test done.

* In an early episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'', Charlotte takes an at-home pregnancy test and the test shows a positive result, which gets her and Drew talking about having another baby, although Angelica starts {{angst}}ing about not being the center of her parents' attention anymore. At the very end of the episode, it's revealed that Charlotte's not actually going to have another baby.
** It's never actually made clear if Charlotte did have a miscarriage--or, at the very least, a chemical pregnancy.[[note]]A very early miscarriage that happens before anything can be seen on an ultrasound (usually occurs at around the fifth week).[[/note]] It's also entirely possible that Charlotte was never actually pregnant in the first place; she could've have a "phantom pregnancy"[[note]]In which a woman exhibits pregnancy-like symptoms when she's not actually pregnant. It's more common in animals than in humans, and in humans, it tends to be more psychological than physical[[/note]] or she could've simply misread or done the pregnancy test incorrectly, which led to a false positive. However, it's also possible that Charlotte could've realized that at-home pregnancy tests aren't always accurate when it comes telling whether or not a woman is pregnant.[[note]]After all, Charlotte ''did'' make an appointment to have an "official" test done.[[/note]]

* ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'': Kelly became pregnant with her and Brandon's child, and after a full episode of coming to terms with it, she lost the baby. Conversely, Kelly's actress, Jennie Garth, however was [[RealLife actually]] pregnant with her first child around the same time (which was [[HideYourPregnancy hidden from the audience]]).

* Katey Sagal's [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life pregnancy was written into a season]] of ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', but the baby was stillborn in a third-term miscarriage. [[RealLifeWritesThePlot To avoid the trauma of an infant on-set so soon after her loss]], Peg's pregnancy was made AllJustADream, and Sagal's subsequent pregnancies had Peg chasing after her parents, and thus not on-screen, to prevent it happening again..