Women have more miscarriages than live births over their lifetime

Most fertilised eggs miscarry rather than develop into healthy babies. However, most miscarriages usually occur very early in pregnancy, without a woman even being aware she was pregnant.

A few previous studies have suggested that miscarriages are the most common outcome of conception. Now a meta-analysis claims to have “unambiguously” confirmed it.

For women in their 20s, conception is as likely to end in miscarriage as it is in a live birth, says William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It is not an abnormality,”…