Bleeding and in pain, pregnant women who miscarry in a Canadian emergency room often receive such poor care that some have passed a recognizable fetus in the waiting room. 

“Those situations occur more often than we would like to think,” said Dr. Catherine Varner, a Toronto emergency physician and deputy editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, who, in an editorial published this week, describes the often-harrowing care women experience when losing a pregnancy in Canada.