I thought Britain was worlds away from Trump’s America – until I needed to get an abortion | Anonymous
I thought Britain was worlds away from Trump’s America – until I needed to get an abortion | Anonymous
I quickly learned that the decision to terminate a pregnancy wasn’t purely a matter of ‘my body, my choice’, says an anonymous writer
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.
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Complain to the BPAS. That counsellor is unfit for their role.
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your body, my choice
That policy doesn't even work. Romania tried this. Decree 770 outlaw all abortions and contraceptives. Parents dumped their children at orphanages because they couldn't afford to raise them. The regime was in the end toppled, in large part because of all the children raised in poverty and from orphanages.
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Evangelicals literally couldn't give a shit about reality... they live in a fantasy world where the world will end next year and where the only moral abortion is my abortion because those other women were tramps or some other bullshit.
These people are fucking broken from having propaganda shoved down their gullets 24/7 and rather than treating Evangelicalism as a mental health crisis America decides to put them in government.
About twenty years ago, I was happy to live and let live when it came to religion... it's now clear that it isn't just the opiate of the masses. It's a poison to society. Some people find comfort from trauma in religion, and it legitimately helps them - but the cost to society is too great.
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When you believe in an all powerful space fairy, it's quite easy to believe in other arbitrary nonsense too. QAnon was an interesting phenomenon, as it was uniting the crystal woo hippy left antivax crowd into the magical space fairy religious right. And the radicalization pipeline took it from there.
It's not necessarily religion that is the problem here. It's that people who don't have critical reasoning skills are drawn to religion. But they're also drawn to whatever other bullshit anyone is peddling.
Excuse me a moment, I need to adjust my magnetic bracelet and turn on my Himalayan salt lamp.
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I made a few Romanian friends in university. Granted you're going to get some skewed perspectives when talking to expats, but each one of them said that Romania was a shit hole that they were glad to have escaped. Decree 770 (and other policies that were enacted by the same regime, that have left a scar on the country) was a large part of why.
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"Your body, my choice," is a rape threat, not an anti abortion slogan.
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Can't it be both a gov't and man's statement?
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How many weeks pregnant was she ?
Uk law is clear .