Talk:Pregnancy

MOS:GNL in the lead
On  removed the word woman's from the lead, though without reason. About ago,  restored it with an edit summary, I then removed it again citing MOS:GNL and MOS:SEAOFBLUE. Crossroads has restored it a second time.

With respect to Crossroads' second edit summary, the third bullet point of Gender-neutral language does not apply. We aren't making a direct statement that men can have a uterus. Though that certainly is true for cisgender men (see Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome), trans men, and non-binary people. The fourth bullet point doesn't apply in this circumstance, as when modern WP:MEDRS sources discuss uteri they typically do so without gendered adverbs like woman, though some still use sexed adverbs like female. And the sixth bullet point does not apply, as we are already linking to uterus and the sex and gender distinction is not overly helpful in this regard.

Gender-neutral language issues aside, there is also a MOS:SEAOFBLUE issue here. That one is pretty clear that When possible, do not place links next to each other, to avoid appearing like a single link. Because the current text reads "woman's uterus", while being two separate links, it appears to be a single one when rendered. If we are going to keep woman here, which as I've said seems not necessary, at the very least it should not be wikilinked there per SEAOFBLUE. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Refreshing myself of the two past discussions linked in the edit summary, neither of those actually addressed the substance behind the edits to this sentence over the last few days. Both of those prior discussions were specifically relating to including content relating to trans pregnancies in the lead. This issue is not that, as it is about using gendered language for terminology that does not need to be gendered, and is not gendered in recent MEDRS. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * We aren't making a direct statement that men can have a uterus. A stated purpose of the edit is to avoid saying that women have uteri, on the basis that men (and nonbinary people) can too. For the same reason, the sixth bullet point does apply as well.
 * The fourth bullet point doesn't apply in this circumstance, as when modern WP:MEDRS sources discuss uteri they typically do so without gendered adverbs like woman - this is not correct and easily disproven. 2021 2021 2021 2020 2020 2020 2020 2022 2020 etc. etc. Almost all such sources refer to the people affected by pregnancy as women, straightforwardly.
 * MOS:SEAOFBLUE states when possible, it isn't a hard and fast rule. But if that is the issue, then removing the wikilink would suffice. Neither it nor GNL justify removing a word that both experts and everyday readers use commonly, typically, and freely.
 * This discussion which I linked in my edit summary opened with the user proposing to remov[e] words such as "woman". This did not succeed after discussion and never has. Crossroads -talk- 00:42, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Correct, but there could be some middle ground here; e.g., there is probably no reason to write "woman's uterus" when just "uterus" will do. But I'm opposed to peppering this article with language like "pregnant people" and "people with uteruses" and so on, because it's still not the conventional way across all RS to write about this subject (even among MEDRS sources, where usage remains sharply divided), so it is jarring to many readers (and highly socio-politicized to many of them as well).  As with singular-they becoming the new normal, such language might become the new normal over time, but it has not yet. WP's articles are not the place to engage in a "culture war"; we should steer as far away from that as is practical with bounds of policy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Another way to address the SEAOFBLUE issue is just to not link to Woman. We're not expecting readers to need that link to be able to understand this article, after all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * this is not correct and easily disproven Actually, a PubMed search for uterus AND woman, filtered to show only reviews, meta-analysis, and systematic reviews shows 126 papers published in the last five years. However a PubMed search for uterus NOT woman, with the same filters, returns 1,446 results. There is an order of magnitude more papers publish that do not use gendered terminology here than use it. Even if you count all papers published since 1975, uterus AND woman has 562 results, to uterus NOT woman's 5,881. I am very certain that MEDRS do not overwhelmingly use gendered adverbs when discussing uteri. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that everywhere else in the article where we mention uteri, we either say "the uterus" or just "uterus", without gender modifier. If we don't need that modifier in the article's body, why do we need it in the lead? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Something is apparently problematic with the search feature used in that way; I tried to verify the results and they don't work out. For example this article shows up in your "NOT" search but very clearly uses "woman" and "women" heavily throughout, both in the abstract and in the rest. Same here. This one uses it heavily in the body of the article. This one uses the term. And here. I could go on but clearly the NOT function in PubMed is not able to identify articles that use "uterus" and not "woman" or "women", hence invalidating the analysis. The fact that the same pattern in the results goes back to 1975, when the idea of avoiding "woman" because of pregnant non-women was nonexistent, is also telling.
 * The present lead sentence is (a) the status quo and there was not a consensus to change that in the past, and (b) acts as a very broad overview, which later sentences do not. Crossroads -talk- 01:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It's the pluralization of woman to women. Unlike a Google search, PubMed does not always automatically search for plurals or synonyms.
 * Modifying the search to uterus AND (woman OR women) returns 565 results for the last five years, with the same filters. Whereas uterus NOT (woman OR women) returns 1,154 results. Expanding that to all papers ever indexed by PubMed gives uterus AND (woman OR women) 2,170 results and uterus NOT (woman OR women) 4,374 results. There's still an order of magnitude difference for the last five years, though overall the pattern is roughly 2:1 in favour genderless terminology when describing the uterus. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Your results only search titles and abstracts; a look at the fully viewable ones reveals that they generally use those terms in the source even if they happen not to do so in the abstract; e.g. It remains the case that almost all sources on the topic refer to the group affected by pregnancy as women, straightforwardly. Crossroads -talk- 01:36, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they use gendered adverbs for discussing pregnancy, I haven't checked too deeply as it's tangential to this discussion, but not for the uterus. Each of those three papers, as well as the five this comment do not use a gendered adverb when discussing the uterus. And most instances of the term also do not use a sexed adverb either. Overwhelmingly when sources discuss uteri they do so using gender-neutral and sex-neutral terminology.
 * As an amusing aside, as you highlighted a French language paper above, the French word for uterus; utérus, is a masculine noun. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:49, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * For what little it is worth, I support removing "woman" from "uterus" for the simple fact that pregnancies in girls 10-14 are hardly unknown, and it rings culturally hollow to me to refer to such people as "women." But happy to go wherever consensus leads.  Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 03:37, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * You do know PubMed contains articles about non-human organisms with uteri...? There are 837 results in the last 5 years for "mouse" AND "uterus", 517 for rat, etc. EDIT: Now I see that you limited it to reviews/metas/SRs; but that still yields hundreds of articles in other animals, including 26 in pigs, 47 in cows, etc. JoelleJay (talk) 04:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Given that the balance of the article uses "woman" a number of times I don't understand why we would avoid the term in the lead. The discussion of the number of times papers use woman/women really would need to look at the specific examples to see if/why they didn't use "woman".  Did they use an alternative word indicating gender/sex, did they actively avoid specifying gender/sex or was the topic specific in a way that gender/sex simply wasn't mentioned (blood profusion across the uterine wall as a hypothetical example).  I think avoiding the word "woman" in the lead would violate the 3rd GNL example which specifically uses pregnancy as an example. Springee (talk) 06:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
 * This has come up again.
 * Could someone please tell me why it's really really really important to link (NB: link, as in Manual of Style/Linking, not merely write the word out in plain old text) the word woman in that particular sentence?
 * If we feel the need to provide a link to Woman early in the article, could we please do that in the infobox's caption, or in the ==Terminology== section, or by introducing the word woman into the second sentence and linking it there ("A multiple pregnancy is when a woman is pregnant with more than one offspring, such as with twins"), instead of in the first sentence, where the blue "woman" runs into the blue "uterus", and makes it difficult to tell whether clicking on "woman" will take you to the article about women or to the article about human uteri? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * removed the word woman's from the lead and has replaced it with "a female" which many women find offensive. Please read the talk pages before making changes to the lead! Somegenerichandle (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I wonder if you could provide a reliable source proving that many women find the word female offensive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's when 'female' is used as a noun rather than a adjective. But many are so adverse to it, language has trended towards morphing woman into an adjective. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/comma-queen/female-trouble-the-debate-over-woman-as-an-adjective Somegenerichandle (talk) 20:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The change, which you reverted without any explanation in the edit summary (something we typically do only when the reason is obvious, like "poop" vandalism, by the way; if you revert similar edits in the future, please try to explain a little in the edit summary, or mention that you'll post a longer discussion on the talk page), changed "a woman's uterus" to "a female's uterus". The older form is unnecessary, and the newer attempt is redundant (as the subject of the article is human pregnancy, and among humans, only the female has a uterus).  Both have a WP:SEAOFBLUE problem.
 * But: your reason for reverting it is that " many women find offensive", for which you have provided a source that says only " Some women bristle at being called females, because it is a word that packages them as bodies".   Firstly, "some" is less than "many"; secondly, pregnancy is an embodied experience, so the bodily aspect is relevant.  (Your source also ends with the author saying she's okay with being called a female.)  So I'm finding the rationale a bit lacking.
 * I would suggest removing it (thus also solving the SEAOFBLUE problem), and, if wanted, sticking the word woman somewhere else in that paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Do you not see the explanation "manual rollback of change by Fwaff"? That is the explanation. I wanted to let Fwaff know that there was a discussion. Many pages have one, and if i wanted to change the lead, after seeing the conversation, i would have asked for a consensus vote. Did i even ping that user correctly?
 * Frankly, i am sorry i edited the talk page. Please focus the topic at hand. All i did was roll it back to the lead that has been on the page a while.Somegenerichandle (talk) 22:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That is not an explanation. An explanation would say why you removed it, rather than just saying that you did. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Female is about females across species, whereas woman is more accurate to what this article is about: human pregnancy. (For the same reason, having neither word is also much less clear, in addition to the other problems elaborated above). WP:SEAOFBLUE opens with When possible; it's not a hard and fast rule, and clearly acknowledges that sometimes it isn't possible, as this seems to be. Incidentally SEAOFBLUE's rationale has to do with avoid[ing] appearing like a single link; however when hovering over the link it becomes obvious that it is not a single link since only one word of the two become underlined.
 * I understand the dislike of overusing "female" instead of "woman"; while I am sure sources on the matter exist somewhere, anecdotally there is a lot of online discourse and complaint about how some men will refer to women as "females" to make dehumanizing and negative generalizations. Crossroads -talk- 23:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you, Crossroads! And i agree it's best to separate the two links. It's a difficult sentence, but maybe something like this is better? :shrug: Somegenerichandle (talk)
 * >Pregnancy is the time during which a woman develops one or more offspring (gestates) inside her uterus (womb). Somegenerichandle (talk) 04:04, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That would work.
 * @Crossroads, you can't hover over a link on a mobile device, which is where most of our readers are. SEAOFBLUE is about what you see without hovering. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * At present it seems that the 's, in black text, creates a separation between the links anyway. Crossroads -talk- 17:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Recommend adding section on epilepsy to Pregnancy > Diseases in Pregnancy
Epilepsy affects over 1 million people who can bear children in the U.S.. A consortium of epilepsy and reproductive care providers have recently consolidated up-to-date research about epilepsy and pregnancy, including related to anti-seizure medications, on a website aimed at both patient and clinician audiences. The site aims to correct misconceptions about safety issues and risks associated with bearing children if you have epilepsy. Adding a section on epilepsy to the Diseases in Pregnancy section of the Pregnancy page would give people with epilepsy and their doctors a reliable place to start researching the implications of getting pregnant while managing epilepsy and medications taken to control it.

RobertAtkinson (talk) 22:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Your organization's web site does not meet the requirements set out in WP:MEDRS for sourcing biomedical content. We cannot use it as a source, nor can we use the single studies you are otherwise citing. MrOllie (talk) 22:16, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * See also Talk:Epilepsy. We might someday have an article on Epilepsy and pregnancy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Stress
I've got some concerns about this new section. First of all, it's really long and goes into way too much detail (e.g., telomeres). Secondly, I think that some of it is probably wrong. For example, stress isn't technically a complication of pregnancy. Gestational diabetes is a complication of pregnancy; being stressed because you don't have the financial or social support you need is not a medical complication. I'm going to substantially shorten it. I hope we can find a compromise that includes stress in the article but doesn't rely on primary sources or creating stress by making readers feel like their normal and rational reactions to everyday life is damaging the next generation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, nearly all of that was based on inappropriate use of WP:MEDPRI sources, or was needlessly detailed or verbose. It's much shorter now.  Please see the edit summaries I left in the page history. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Trimming was appropriate. Also, it presently states The children of women who had high stress levels during pregnancy are slightly more likely to have externalizing behavioral problems such as impulsivity. We probably need a source to clarify this is correlation. It’s potentially confounded by other factors (e.g. genes from stressed parents are passed to offspring, or that stressed parents might live in stressful situations that their children are also exposed to). Zenomonoz (talk) 05:03, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The source is cited at the end of that sentence. The abstract says "The magnitude of the prenatal effect size remained largely unchanged after adjusting for postnatal distress", so apparently they've already controlled for some confounding factors.  I think what's missing is an idea of what level of stress 'counts'.  Is this the level of stress like "pregnancy is uncomfortable and I don't know how we'll cope financially", or is it the one like "my husband was murdered while I was pregnant"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Also do you think there is a bit of content that could be moved under single subheadings? There is a 'complications' section but 'diseases in pregnancy' is a separate section? Zenomonoz (talk) 10:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ==Complications== is the section for medical problems caused by the pregnancy. ==Diseases== is the section for people who have an unrelated medical condition and also get pregnant (like:  if you already have an autoimmune disease, can you have children safely?).  The latter might benefit from a clearer section heading.  External stress might fit into the ==Diseases== section, but I'm not sure about that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Good point. Zenomonoz (talk) 00:01, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah it definitely seemed to make some big claims without secondary sources, though I don't know the subject that well. Thanks for trimming. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 16:21, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 May 2024
Suggestion to clarify language throughout that pregnancy occurs in human *females*. That is the sex of someone with a womb: female is the most accurate, least political definition of who can be pregnant. Different language for such examples as the image captioned "pregnant woman" makes sense, of course. I am not an activist nor angry denizen. This suggestion is earnestly meant to help make a protected article irrefutable: female is female. Thanks. 207.102.159.61 (talk) 16:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Do you want the word "female" to replace "woman", or to supplement it?
 * There was a discussion recently that claimed using female as a noun (e.g., "human females", but not "female humans"; "pregnant females", but not "female athletes") is derogatory. It turns out this has been contested off and on for about 130 years.  Originally, it was about the word female being used for other animals, so the Victorians decided that it was dehumanizing to lump women into the same category as livestock.  Now, it seems to be about the linguistic quirks of kids these days ("Every time I've dated a young man who talks about 'females' instead of 'women', he turned out to be a misogynistic jerk"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. Jamedeus (talk) 18:46, 21 May 2024 (UTC)