TY - JOUR T1 - Can sex during pregnancy cause a miscarriage? A concise history of not knowing JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - e308 LP - e310 DO - 10.3399/bjgp12X636164 VL - 62 IS - 597 AU - Andrew Moscrop Y1 - 2012/04/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/62/597/e308.abstract N2 - What do we tell pregnant women who want to know whether sex could cause them to miscarry? How do we counsel women who wonder whether having sex might have caused their miscarriage?Sexual intercourse is acknowledged to be one (neither necessary nor sufficient) cause of pregnancy, but can coitus cause pregnancy loss? Our professional response has been prudish, paternalistic, and fearful of women's sexuality, but it has never provided a satisfactory answer.In 1980, authors of the 13th edition of the seminal Gynaecology by Ten Teachers textbook were certain: ‘coitus’ was listed among the causes of early pregnancy loss (‘spontaneous abortion’ as it was then termed).1 In the management of ‘threatened abortion’, they asserted that ‘intercourse is forbidden’. Similarly for ‘habitual abortion’: ‘coitus is forbidden’. A decade later, in 1990, the 15th edition of that same text (its team of 10 contributing teachers slightly altered, but still exclusively male) demonstrated a partial retreat from its earlier hardline view on sex in pregnancy:‘… coitus has no effect in a normal pregnancy, but it is unwise in the case of a woman with a history of abortion in a previous pregnancy’.The recommended management for threatened abortion reiterated previous advice regarding the forbiddance of intercourse. For ‘recurrent abortion’ it was professed that ‘in the absence of specific treatment, good results can be obtained by rest, avoidance of intercourse, and encouragement by the doctor’. Assertion of the physician's authority is a subtext. Today's 19th edition of the Ten Teachers textbook contains no mention of sex being ‘forbidden’ (or of the less obviously authoritarian ‘avoidance of intercourse’) in the context of early pregnancy loss. There is, indeed, no mention of sexual activity during pregnancy at all.The retreating, then deleting, of medical judgements on the subject of sexual activity and pregnancy loss … ER -