Throwaway for obvious reasons.
A friend announced a few months ago that she was pregnant. She and her boyfriend were very excited. We’ve been friends since childhood and I was happy for her. I had a miscarriage two years ago and it was pretty traumatic, so I’m mentioning that for full disclosure.
When my friend would have been 15 weeks pregnant, she posted a graphic, gory photo of her miscarried fetus saying she was devastated. Note the terminology: miscarried fetus, not stillborn baby. This pregnancy wasn’t even close to viability and it did not look like a baby.
It looked like a shock image. The fetus looked like it had been dead a while and was sort of disintegrating. 🙁
I was upset and grossed out but simply offered my condolences and clicked “hide” on the first image.
Then it got weirder. A few hours later, she and her boyfriend rolled out a bunch of bizarre photos where they were posing with this visibly decaying fetus in their hands and one where she was kissing it. It looked like they were trying to replicate the photos that parents take with actual stillborn babies but like they weren’t even realizing that this was not the same thing.
I actually got physically sick seeing the pictures where she was kissing it and I reported all the posts to Facebook for graphic violence. Facebook removed them.
She and her boyfriend have spent the last several telling everyone they could about how they were victimized and abused by Facebook and how they had a beautiful, perfect baby and someone thought their baby was “graphic violence.” And of course the obligatory “If you think my beautiful child is violent or gory, unfriend me now.”
The only reason I haven’t unfriended her is because I’m realizing I might have been TA and I may owe her an apology and may need to process through my repulsion on my own, rather than reporting someone to Facebook while they were grieving.
Conclusion
In the aftermath, a difficult question lingers: was it a betrayal of friendship or a necessary act of self-preservation? The story ends with a profound realization, leaving us to ponder the delicate balance between empathy and boundaries. Could this friendship survive such an ordeal, or was it destined to crumble under the weight of this traumatic event?
Here’s how people reacted:
A miscarriage can be extremely distressing and take a toll on your mental health, but this just seems disturbing.
That is disgusting. Immensely so. Nobody needs to see that and you don’t have to feel bad for reporting that AT ALL!
However, it sounds like your friends are blinded by grief and don’t realize how a post like that could affect others (why I chose NAH instead of n t a). To them it probably feels no different than a stillborn photo shoot because they see it as a baby rather than just a non viable fetus. They probably should’ve just used the photos for their own personal viewing rather than putting them on the internet, but I don’t necessarily think it makes them assholes.
Just for the record, I do personally agree with OP that it is completely different from an actual baby and that I wouldn’t want to see pictures of it either.
EDIT: Grammar
I was tempted to say NAH, specifically because I worked in NICU bereavement for a short time and it’s actually standard to take these photos. The remains are dressed in donated doll clothes, given small teddy bears and blankets, and if in tact enough, hand and foot prints are made in clay. These photos and items have been found to assist in the grieving process, but posting them online is incredibly inappropriate in my mind. Sharing photos of the deceased, no matter what stage, is simply too disturbing for most people.
I’d urge people to not judge the fact that these mementos were created, only that they were shared without considering the potential trauma to others.
I’m all for honesty, if she asks you if you did it, yes, tell her the truth. Don’t go volunteering. I am almost certain you aren’t the only one who found pictures disturbing. NTA
People grieve in different ways but other people shouldn’t be subject to it. There are groups specific to posting those kind of pics. I know I’m part of them as I had an ectopic pregnancy and was offered surgery pics of everything. I said no as I would personally sit there and constantly cry.
I get why they have took the photos and they should have a warning on them like social media does with most thing.
I would suggest some of the groups on Facebook for her just search miscarriage and pregnancy loss in the search and there are loads that come up.
Some people don’t honestly understand the hurt and pain you go through. One friend had a still birth I went to the funeral, my other friend had two miscarriages I was there and supportive. I didn’t truly understand the heartbreak until I was told there was no chance of it surviving and I had internal bleeding, lying on an operating table with half my fertility gone.
Just try and be supportive, understanding and sometimes you don’t even need to a say a word, just be there.
15 weeks isn’t viable, but if she wanted to have it, that’s still her baby. She has every right to mourn it the way she feels is right. She loved that fetus, and it isn’t anyone’s place to tell her that not only does she not get her baby, but she can’t have any photos either because it upsets someone else. I think posting them might be a bit much, but some people share everything and that’s how they are. It’s not hard to hide the post.
Part of my job is to prepare dead fetuses for pathology/autopsy. I’ve seen fetuses in every stage of development up to viability (and sadly beyond). At 15 weeks, they are far more developed than a first trimester fetus, though they don’t have what we think of when we say skin. It’s red and kinda transparent and you can see parts of a human body that you really don’t want to. And I understand that can be upsetting. It can be disgusting to people who didn’t have an emotional tie to the pregnancy or whatever. It might look, to someone who hasn’t seen a lot of second trimester fetuses, like it was disintegrated, but it’s not. That’s just how they look.