Through an exploration of two settings, Qatar and England, this chapter makes sense of women’s experiences of miscarriage, particularly the way they are impacted by the social landscape in which reproduction is embedded. I argue that expectations of reproductive agency produce anxiety about uncertain fertility futures and increase notions of culpability. Qatar and England provide an opportunity to compare and explore the tensions between reproductive choice and pregnancy loss because of the variation in reproductive experiences and reproductive agency. Such a comparison furthers analytic understandings of women’s responses to reproductive disruption by teasing out the way notions of agency impacts the experience. The chapter demonstrates how perceptions of avoiding miscarriage and being a “good”, “pre-conception” parent are situated within a broader cultivation of neoliberal citizens in England, compared with Qatari experiences where miscarriage is framed as reproductive proof. A comparative approach to reproduction exposes the opposing and fluid meanings of ‘control,’ and when fertility rates are viewed across a continuum
