Incompetence. Insufficiency. Weakness.

Why call it an incompetent cervix? Why’s it called cervical insufficiency? What about cervical weakness?

These are questions, I believe, everyone with this condition has asked themselves or been asked. I had multiple spiral moments trying to decide what to name this website, how to word the campaign title and corresponding social media accounts. Some parts of the world call it cervical incompetence while others call it cervical insufficiency. Which got me to thinking … is there a right way of phrasing it?

I think the reason we get a knee jerk reaction when we hear words like incompetent and weakness, is because of the stigma behind these words. They are associated with negative things. An incompetent worker is bad at their jobs, right? So are our cervix’s. Weakness is the opposite of strength right? Well no matter how strong-minded we are, no matter how hard we fight, our cervix’s become weak.

Hiding from these words is just feeding into the stigma behind them. If we take a look at the bigger picture and how we can better explain these words we’ll actually see that cervical insufficiency AND cervical weakness are in fact symptoms of an incompetent cervix. Insufficiency being the inability of an organ to perform its function and weakness being literally, lacking strength. By creating better awareness of these symptoms and this condition we can help break the stigma behind the phrasing.