On The Abortion Act

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Abortion Act in the U.K. At a time when women’s reproductive rights are under attack globally, with women facing imprisonment for having a miscarriage, where women have died in Ireland, because the doctors had their hands tied by the law and in America, where Abortion rights are increasingly restricted and people have their rights to use the Pill under attack.

In 1967, women in the U.K. could die or be left sterile at the hands of backstreet abortionists. Some of them were very good, but many were not. Desperate women, who couldn’t afford to seek treatment in private clinics abroad, had few options: disgrace and a mother’s home, where their child would probably be adopted, forced into marriage or a backstreet abortion. This was before the days of oral contraception being widely available. 

My mother was a young solicitor, working for the civil service and she was asked to join the drafting team. My mother was an incredibly intelligent woman, who could look at all the evidence and make a reasonable decision. She knew that this Act was the right thing to do and worked on it. For her, it wasn’t about killing babies, a claim the pro-life crowd often make, it was about saving the lives of pregnant women. Remember, one of the criteria relating to abortion is about the mental health of the mother? I often wonder what stories they heard or experiences she and the rest of their team had to put that consideration in.

Abortion isn’t about getting rid of unwanted pregnancies for convenience or a form of contraception. As someone who has nursed people, I know the reactions they have and I don’t judge them at all. Every individual in this situation has made the decision they have for a reason and it is their right to do so. I don’t have the right to decide what is right for anyone else. I mean, gender selective abortion, using it as a form of contraception because nothing else has been used - well, yes, I have a problem with that. I don’t believe in abortion personally myself, but I am pro-choice and I will defend any person’s right to safe abortion with my life, because I do not have the right to force my beliefs on others. I am a supporter of Daisy Chain - an organisation who offer support to women having to walk past protestors for appointments at clinics. Pro-life groups harass already vulnerable people and I think it is appalling. I’d like to see them excluded from hospital premises and put under a minimum 100m ban from approaching. Their right to free speech is interfering with medical treatment and they have no right to badger anyone about why they are going anywhere for any procedure. 

In many cases, people choose abortion, sometimes for their own health. For some, it’s related to serious genetic and other conditions that have shown up on prenatal testing. These are all difficult decisions for people.

I once asked my mother about what she thought about the Abortion Act, given she had five children and refused a termination for her fifth child, even when told she would probably die at birth or the baby would die (for the record, she had her fifth section and my sibling was just fine). She had a lot of people, including her own retired GP father telling her to have a termination. She told me quite simply that it was about the numbers of women who were dying, contracting infections, becoming unable to have babies in future. She was shocked at the figures she was seeing. That was why she supported the Act and it’s drafting. She then told me that within a year of it becoming law they knew it had worked.

The numbers of women dying dropped. The new law had saved lives.

So today, I will be thinking about my mother, who, for all her faults in parenting me, made such a massive contribution to women’s reproductive rights in this country. 

Thanks Mum.

Me, too

This is going to be a difficult post for me. I’ve not been as forthcoming as I could have been on social media, mainly because I struggle a huge deal with my self esteem and confidence and the ASD has resulted in my not forming any relationship where intimacy has resulted. Due to resultant control issues (partly down to abuse I endured as a child, partly because of the ASD), I have more than a passing interest in BDSM and, around ten years ago, I was exploring that, non-sexually, and making friends who understood and did not judge me for having ideas and being inquisitive about things that other people thought made me “a freak” or simply completely got the wrong end of the stick.  I am not a freak. I am an individual.

I had been raped before: my second sexual experience was being raped, in my own bed, aged 18, by someone my flatmate had invited back to our flat. He would not take no for an answer. I experienced first hand the instinctive blame put on the victim by friends of the perpetrator. It took me a decade to go to the police and by that time, they couldn’t track me down. But they did listen.

When I was training in a city away from home, I started to explore my different interests within the community down there. I felt a real sense of freedom and release at being able to express myself to the fullest sense possible of my identity. I am what is known as a switch and I am also poly in direction too. I am both dominant and submissive. I like men and women, although it is more of a thing that I simply find things about people attractive and I don’t define myself as one thing or another. That’s a conversation for another time.

Then I met someone I thought I could trust to explore these things with on a sexual level. We talked a lot about various things and I felt I knew him. There is, in this kind of thing, situations where you have a mentor and also partners. I knew he was seeing other people. I assumed I was being invited into that collective. I assumed he would take precautions. That assumption has haunted me for ten years.

The circumstances of what occurred meant I would never even have been able to pursue charges being laid. Suffice to say, I was very clear about what was OK and not OK and I was ignored. At the time, I was not in a position to be able to do anything about it. My trust, which in this case is paramount, was utterly betrayed. I had said no, I had used my safe word and he had refused to stop. That’s rape.That is all I am saying about it. The next morning I went home and later that evening discovered from him that all he had wanted was one night of sex. I felt humiliated, betrayed, deeply upset, utterly vulnerable. I stepped back from the community for a while, to lick my wounds and be more careful.

Except that this wasn’t the end of it.

Two months later I had to report to the GUM clinic, because of symptoms I had been having. I discovered that I had Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, bilaterally. For those of you who know about this, you’ll know that’s not good. I was examined and asked for the (male) student not to be in the room. I was ignored. I was handed two lots of strong antibiotics for a significant period, which made me feel very unwell and on the advent of my 33rd birthday was told, possibly incorrectly (I have since discovered the clinic has a habit of mixing up notes) that while I hadn’t contracted any kind of blood-borne disease and while it wasn’t Gonorhhea, Syphilis etc, the damage that had occured meant it was highly improbable I would ever have children. 

Let that sink in.

As a responsible adult, I contacted the dickhead who did this to me to inform him which is when he told me that one of his partners had had a UTI and they’d had unprotected sex. He casually informed me that it could be transmitted through sex. Eye-opening. I was devastated.

I decided, realising the legal route wasn’t an option, with the support of some friends, I told our de facto community leader what had happened, because of safety concerns for others. The result was that while he continued to be a respected member of the community, I was ostracised. I no longer felt safe going to events or clubs, let alone exploring anything with my friends. And i was developing quite the skill with a bullwhip. I still support the community. I still want friends in the community, but I will never again want to be active in that way. This event destroyed that - and sex generally for me - I thought permanently. I have not trusted close male friends for a decade. Until two weeks ago, I had not even kissed someone in seven years. I have met someone quite wonderful who I am having an unconventional friendship with, but it is slow going. I’m going to have to tell him the above, in far more detail: I am not looking forwards to it. 

Sex was always something where people just wanted the physical act from me. Even in an 18 month relationship, they had no interest in intimacy. My sexual history has been occasionally falling into bed with someone and a crippling lack of confidence and self esteem to approach people I liked, along with sheer terror of my emotional responses. On top of that, one delightful horror, jealous at my “getting to someone first”, got that partner drunk, got him to tell her everything I had asked him to do in bed and then, I kid you not, told all of our mutual acquaintances. And this guy? The first person I had trusted to sleep with after the first rape. Some 18 months later. It was another 18 months before I went there again and in typical questionable judgement, that guy knew how vulnerable I was in so many ways, yet not only split up with his girlfriend for a week to sleep with me, guilt free, but also then threatened me with that if I ever told anyone about it, he would just say I was crazy, making it up and people would believe him, not me. Unfortunately for him, he we overheard saying that. This guy had been someone I trusted implicitly. It was devastating.

A friend put up a post a couple of days ago about what happened to her at the festival and the response of people around her to it. There has been some backlash. I sort of understand their reaction, but I deeply understand hers, too. Which is why I am writing this post, now. In some ways, I a, disappointed in some of our mutual friends. I am not sure they are truly taking the time to understand and respect her experience and what effect it has had on her. 

I have alluded to some of this on a comment on that post. I’m not sure of what will happen. What I will say is that it has taken me ten years to start exploring intimacy and challenge these - and other associated - demons. 

This isn’t the only occasion something awful happened to me. I do hope it was the last.

#metoo