- Prince Harry discussed Meghan Markle's miscarriage in the Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan."
- While the cause of miscarriage is unclear, he blamed the stress of a lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday.
Prince Harry said he believes Meghan Markle's miscarriage occurred due to stress around the couple's lawsuit against a British tabloid.
In the sixth and final episode of the Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan," which was released on Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex discussed the miscarriage that Meghan suffered in the summer of 2020 while pursuing a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Limited, which owns the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday.
Harry shared his belief that the stress of the privacy case — which revolved around the publication of a handwritten letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle — contributed to Meghan losing her second pregnancy.
"I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what The Mail did," he said while reflecting on that period.
"I watched the whole thing. Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was created, caused by that? Course we don't," he continued.
"But bearing in mind the stress that it caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her," he added.
According to Healthline, there is no evidence that stress is a direct cause of miscarriage, however some studies have suggested it's possible it could be a factor.
Jenny Afia, the duchess' former lawyer, also appeared in the documentary and commented that one particular development in the case in early summer placed a lot of stress on Meghan.
She said: "I knew the stress the latest development was having on Meghan and that was that The Mail were going to argue that Meghan's friends had already spoken about the letter to People magazine and that Meghan had authorized that interview, which she hadn't."
Meghan herself added: "I just felt it was important to protect them in the way they were trying to protect me. And that was right in the same week that we moved into our home in Santa Barbara."
"I was pregnant, I really wasn't sleeping and the first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried," she stated.
Meghan's close friend and former "Suits" costar Abigail Spencer recalled witnessing the moment that Meghan realized that something was wrong.
She said that Meghan gestured at her stomach and told her she was "having a lot of pain," before she "just fell to the ground."
Later in the episode, Harry said he believes that The Mail on Sunday reproduced parts of the "personal and private" letter from Meghan to her father across five articles in 2018 because "they knew the family would encourage us not to sue."
Meghan eventually won the privacy claim in 2021 and was awarded a nominal £1 ($1.23) in damages from The Mail On Sunday's publisher.
DMG Media, the intermediate holding company for Associated Newspapers, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Meghan said in the docuseries that she wrote the letter after seeking advice from the late Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III and that she attempted to send it discreetly.
In November 2021, Meghan spoke about the miscarriage for the first time in an op-ed article in The New York Times. Writing in the piece, titled "The Losses We Share," the duchess said she felt a "sharp cramp" one morning as she was changing her son's diaper.
It is unknown how far along Markle was in her pregnancy when she had the miscarriage. The duke and duchess had not announced that they were expecting a second child at the time and have since welcomed a daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, who was born on June 4, 2021.