This article references abortion and baby loss.
Last night (18 March), peers in the House of Lords voted to decriminalise abortion, following a historic battle to challenge Victorian-era abortion laws in England and Wales.
This is the next stage after the law was voted through the House of Commons in July last year, when two Labour MPs, Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy, tabled rival amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Antoniazzi's amendment to remove "the threat of investigation, arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment" of any woman who acts in relation to her own pregnancy was voted overwhelmingly in favour.
Now, 58 years after The Abortion Act was introduced in 1967, which didn't decriminalise abortion, but simply made it legal in certain circumstances, women across the UK truly have the right to choose, and won't be penalised for acting in their own and their family's best interests.
Evelyn* had a medical abortion (also known as the abortion pill) at age 19 after unexpectedly falling pregnant. Had her termination not been deemed necessary by two doctors who “authorised” the procedure, she could have found herself facing prosecution with a maximum penalty of life in prison. Read her story, in her own words, below.
Seven years ago, I was enjoying my final few weeks of the summer before packing up and moving away for my first year of university. In what seemed like a cruel turn of events, it was at one of my university send-off parties that I found out I was pregnant.
My then-boyfriend and I were sexually active at the time, and we were using barrier methods to prevent pregnancy. Suffice it to say, one of the condoms must have failed.
I had gotten my cycle like every other month, although this month was lighter, and I felt different. I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong, so I took a pregnancy test at the party. Two lines showed up almost immediately. I was pregnant.
Not to the police – and certainly not to the likes of Nigel Farage.
I was just a teenager whose life entailed juggling a part-time job, an unsteady relationship, living at home and partying. I was not ready to be a mum, nor would I have been in the right financial situation, mental headspace or time in my life to step up and be the parent that my child would have deserved.
After telling my best friend and boyfriend, I made arrangements to visit my local walk-in clinic to confirm my pregnancy wasn’t a false positive. It wasn’t, and one of the lovely NHS nurses talked through my options. I told her I wanted an abortion, though it was not an easy decision to come to, and she gave me the number for Marie Stopes (which is now known as MSI Reproductive Choices).
I had opted for a medical termination, and my first appointment entailed an ultrasound to work out how far along I was. I was six weeks gestation, which meant I was within the 10-week limit to have the medication abortion.
Two doctors signed off on my decision, and I took the first dose of medication, mifepristone, which blocks the main pregnancy hormone, as per the NHS, on the same day. This dose didn’t cause me to have any cramping or bleeding, but I did feel overwhelmed knowing I could no longer change my mind.
I came back to the clinic the next day armed with painkillers, a hot water bottle, a heavy flow pad, and my mum for moral support and a lift home. I then took the second dose, misoprostol, which expels the pregnancy. I began cramping and bleeding almost immediately, and I remember feeling an urge to vomit and “push” all at once by the time we got home.
Thankfully, the bleeding and pain stopped a few weeks later, but it was the emotional turmoil of my decision which weighed down on my shoulders like a ton of bricks. Even after I started university and began finding my own way in the world, secure in the knowledge that I had made the right choice (though it was by far not an easy one), I felt paralysed by “what ifs”.
“I contemplated stopping posting images of myself but I didn’t want to let the misogynistic trolls get their way."
I took up counselling at my university, and found comfort in online groups for women who had gone through something similar. But I cannot begin to imagine how a woman who has gone through baby loss of any kind in England or Wales must have felt, also facing prosecution on top of that.
In the past year alone, six women were made to appear in court charged with ending or attempting to end their own pregnancy outside of the previous abortion law. That’s six potentially vulnerable women with their own lives and their own set of circumstances who were made to feel like criminals.
Now, women who, like me, have their reasons for choosing to have an abortion, will no longer have to live in fear that they could be criminally prosecuted for exercising their right to choose. Nor will women who have to grapple with a devastating miscarriage, stillbirth, or an "illegal" abortion be put on trial after already enduring such a traumatic experience.
Undergoing an abortion in any situation can be a heavy choice, and I hope that this change makes that decision feel a little bit lighter for women and those with uteruses, now and in the future.
As told to Gabriella Ferlita. *Name has been changed.
