Roughly 36 hours after I first heard about the horrifying Maga taunt “your body, my choice”, I learned that I was pregnant, despite having a contraceptive coil. My relief that I lived in the UK, not the US – where abortion is rapidly becoming illegal or inaccessible at best – was profound. Yet I realised that I had no idea how to access abortion, having complacently assumed that it would always be available if I needed it. Some fraught Googling led me to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. A couple of days later, I had my first appointment and very quickly learned that it wasn’t purely “my choice”, even in Britain.
Of all the words you don’t want to hear by surprise, “transvaginal” is up there. I thought the scan to determine how pregnant I was would be the kind where a technician slathers goop on your stomach. I wasn’t told until I arrived that it would be internal, because of the assumed early gestation. A second surprise: the coil was gone, most likely sucked out by my period cup. Later that day, I had a phone consultation. The nurse told me two doctors would have to sign off on the termination and asked me to justify why my life would be negatively affected if I were forced to continue with the pregnancy. Horrified, I said I should just be able to say: I don’t want to. She was extremely kind and agreed, but said this was a legal requirement under the Abortion Act.
I told her I lived hundreds of miles from my partner. We hadn’t been together very long and were united on this. I lived in a one-bedroom flat. I could barely afford my own life. My career would suffer. The presence – or so I thought – of a coil should show that I had been actively warding against pregnancy. What more did she want? I am bullish in the face of authority I disagree with, but felt furious for any less headstrong person seeking an abortion – already grappling with guilt and overwhelmed at dealing with the medical establishment – who might doubt their own needs when confronted in this way.
Accessing abortion is like a full-time job, one that sent me to three clinics across north, south and deep west London in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible. If I had waited for a local appointment – or if a restrictive job or childcare prevented me from travelling – it would have been another two weeks of increasing nausea, exhaustion and soreness. Termination was not an emotional decision for me and my partner, but the process was beyond draining, even with friends’ loving support. So was dealing with well-meaning people who projected sadness on to the situation. I asked them to talk to me as if I were having a wisdom tooth out (except you don’t need two doctors to sign off on that).
On our way to west London for the termination last Monday, I read the Guardian’s interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who believes abortion is “morally indefensible” even in cases of rape or incest. I vibrated with rage while we navigated a delayed Northern line in a panic. What is morally indefensible is the notion that any woman or person who can bear children should have to live with the unwitting products of such violence. If doctors must be satisfied that continued pregnancy would cause “grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”, I defy any situation to more accurately meet those requirements.
I had the sense, as a person going through it, that even in the UK the decision to terminate is perceived by some as frivolous, a luxury; not a frankly violating last resort that often leaves you struggling to advocate for yourself in the midst of appalling pain. The male doctor doing my procedure told me period cups were unhygienic and that it was better to use tissue. (The Lancet cites studies that say cups are less likely to cause infection than tampons or pads.) “Spoken like someone who has never had periods,” I said, exchanging a look with the female nurse. “I mean pads,” he stuttered from between my legs.
Not that I wasn’t naive: I had no idea that abortion is still technically illegal in Great Britain unless certain conditions are met. You might think: if abortion remains accessible, surely this is just a technicality. But there has been a sudden rise in women being prosecuted for having so-called illegal abortions, with reports of healthcare providers breaching patient confidentiality. This continuing criminalisation enables the erosion of rights. The new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, voted in 2022 against legislation to introduce buffer zones around abortion clinics and hospitals to limit harassment by anti-abortion protesters, and against the government’s “pills by post” scheme to facilitate home abortion without in-person consultation (both laws passed). Another Conservative amendment earlier this year aimed to reduce the abortion limit to 22 weeks.
Labour must move forward with decriminalising abortion (a cross-party proposal to decriminalise it up to 24 weeks was shelved after this year’s snap election) and enact rigorous protections for anyone seeking such healthcare as a matter of urgency, particularly as it faces the threat of a Tory party that is an existential concession to Reform UK – one that leans further right, socially, than many people of reproductive age will have experienced in our lifetimes. Any person seeking abortion is already going through enough stress without being subject to a system that legitimises a culture of shame and suspicion.
It must also make that fight intersectional. Two days before my abortion, I still ran a 10k that I had entered months prior, determined not to be stopped. Without really thinking about it, I started my playlist with Planningtorock’s Get Your Fkng Laws Off My Body. It’s a techno anthem about transgender rights, but I hadn’t anticipated how Jam Rostron’s lyrics would gut me that morning. It viscerally underscored to me that denying bodily autonomy to any group legitimises all denial of bodily autonomy – a basic fact missed by anyone who sees the rights of one group as an attack on another. “My body, my choice” is just another empty slogan if it doesn’t apply to everyone.
Now on the other side in a state of stunned relief – and still furiously sore boobs – my only lasting shame is for my previous ignorance, at having learned the hard way that obtaining abortion in the UK isn’t that easy at all. I am bottomlessly grateful that I didn’t have to cross state lines, but the process still felt, at points, like touching the hem of powerlessness. It felt awful.
