T“Look, here it is,” the doctor said suddenly. As the cold gelatin slid out of my stomach, I turned to face the screen he held up to me. “Look, here it is,” he said casually, as if he’d pointed to the Eiffel Tower while walking along the Seine. “It was like finding your car in a car park at a festival.” Without any context, he showed me the fetus I was about to abort.
Last December, I found brightly colored e-cigarettes and Schitt’s Creek There was no cure. After a tumultuous seven weeks after the abortion, the bleeding finally stopped. But the nonstop crying, self-loathing, and sadness haunted me wherever I went.
Ever since I was a teenager, I’d been under the impression that abortion was like a bad period: painful for a few days, then back to the pub and gossiping all night. But here I was, 29, experiencing a deep sense of grief that frightened me. How could I be sad when I didn’t even know I wanted it?
Unable to understand why I couldn’t bounce back quickly, I turned to Reddit in a desperate search for reassurance. I found a thread of young men whose partners described being depressed for months after abortions. Beneath them were sympathetic comments that it can take a long time to bounce back from an abortion. I immediately panicked. How long is long? I don’t have a long time. I was infuriated that the only medical professionals I’d met through this process had shown me what I’d lose and simply said, “That’s the reality,” instead of warning me of what to expect.
I am obviously pro-abortion. I say “obviously” not because I think you know me, but because I think I know the right thing to do. But if you know me, you know my comedy has always been described as “sex-positive” and in support of “women being able to do whatever they want with their bodies”. I am lucky to live in a place where abortion is available and have never been arrested for it. We are especially keenly aware of the fact that in the US, an increasing number of states are making abortion illegal. Meanwhile, in the UK, we are seeing an increase in the number of women being prosecuted for abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy and an increasing number of far-right MPs unashamedly expressing their anti-abortion views.
I feel so grateful for the opportunity to have a safe abortion that I even hesitate to express the complicated emotions that came up after my abortion, but… I’m willing to try.
So I didn’t really plan I couldn’t imagine getting pregnant at this point in my life, and I had decided a few months prior to going off the pill because I wanted to see if a natural cycle would improve my anxiety levels.
News flash: Men don’t like wearing condoms. One night, out of a desire to please a stranger, I agreed to not wear one. The consequences of that spur of the moment decision were something I had to deal with alone.
The day I found out I was pregnant, my best friends panicked. They took the day off work to come over to my house. While they drank wine, I made inappropriate jokes, occasionally breaking down in tears.
“What are you going to do now?” Anna asked. I didn’t know. Confusion was overwhelming. I had always thought I’d never hesitate to have an abortion. I’m Grace Campbell, and I like staying out until 5 a.m., not paying parking tickets on time, and sneaking e-cigarettes into the movies. I never thought about having kids. I was too busy acting like a kid. But now, at 29, in what felt like the last gasp of young adulthood, the words “have an abortion” tumbled out of my mouth.
The prospect of making such a limited decision terrified me. I wished I had more time. As always, my friends became my committee. The mother of one of my best friends called to reassure me that it would be okay to have an abortion. She had had one at the same age as me. “I don’t regret it. It just wasn’t the right time for me,” she said. She sounded so confident. But I wasn’t so sure, and I wondered if my confusion was also due to my stage in life. Everyone around me was having babies, and I was just cruelly reminded that I wasn’t ready.
When it was time to make a decision, I had to do trapeze work. I was producing an ad for a car company, and the concept of the ad was to say yes to everything that was offered to me, which included trapeze work and, unknown to the producers, giving birth to a baby. Just before I climbed up to the high diving board from which I was supposed to jump, a trainer took me to the side.
“Do you have any heart problems?” No. “Asthma?” Only when the cat is around. “Could you be pregnant?” she asked. I panicked. I remembered the eight positive pregnancy tests lined up on the dresser. I became paranoid. What would happen if I decided to have this baby, and I got on the trapeze and sneezed? Would the baby fall out of me?
I considered my options. Option 1: Have a baby with a man I barely know. See how big my breasts get at full term. Not be able to go to Mexico with my daughters next year. Go on tour with my baby.
Option 2: Get an abortion. Just take a few days off work and you’re done.
The trapeze lady asked me again. “No,” I said, “I’m not pregnant.”
“why “Are you going to terminate this pregnancy?” the doctor asked. My friend Holly, who had accompanied me to the hospital, had warned me that I would have to give a reason. This is part of UK abortion law, Two Doctors Women need to have their reasons for having an abortion recognized as valid, so on the way there, I prepared an answer that would make the doctor laugh, because I thought if I could make him laugh, then my abortion would be OK.
“Well,” I told him, “I’m a comedian, and the guy who got me pregnant is a musician, so I just think we should stop putting another baby into the world.” He didn’t laugh.
Instead he gave me his medicine, and I asked him to let me propose a toast to the newborn who might one day be both presenter and musical guest. Saturday Night LiveHolly apologized for my behavior, which is a continuing theme in our lives.
My doctor told me to take another pill the next day. He said I would have some cramps and bleed for a few days, but that it would subside after that. What he didn’t warn me was that the bleeding might continue for a lot longer than that. In fact, for weeks afterwards, I would see bloody clumps of tissue every time I went to the bathroom.
He also didn’t warn me that I might experience the worst depression I’d ever experienced, a hormonal crash that would surpass my historic drop at the 2014 World Cup.
After newsletter promotion
The doctor showed me a fetus on a screen, gave me some medication, and told me some basic facts, but nothing about what was to come. I couldn’t look at a mirror or a picture of myself for months, because it would completely disconnect me from my body and distance me from reality. I would feel guilty for giving up something that was mine. And shame. Guilt is shame that I’m a disgrace to the women who fought for my right to make this choice.
What that doctor will never know, but what I hope he knows now, is that seeing that stain on a screen would leave me with a photographic memory of grief I never knew I could feel — grief for something I didn’t know, but for something I would have loved so much. And for months afterwards, whenever that image came to mind, I wept like a child stumbling over its mother.
I’ve always wondered why the doctor showed me the screen that day. Was it because it wasn’t a real baby yet? Did he want to reassure me? Maybe he wanted to make sure I understood what he was doing because some people have regretted their decisions. Or was he just a man who had never tried to understand how a woman might feel in that situation?
I know that this is not everyone’s experience with abortion. Some of my best friends recovered really quickly. Others have had multiple abortions and some were much harder than others. Abortion is not one size fits all. Abortion is a physical and emotional process. Your reaction to an abortion will be influenced by what’s going on in your life, your past, your present, and your future. And that’s the kind of nuance we absolutely need when talking about abortion.
I was nervous while writing this, afraid that by doing so I would disappoint women. Look no further than the upcoming American election, where we are facing loud, powerful men who want to take away our basic right to choose. Women are controlled, their every move watched, by a male obsession to take away our independence.
So I wonder if we don’t want to tell other people how hard it was for us to have an abortion, because thankfully we’re still allowed to have one, but I think that’s why we’re denied nuance.
In February, four months after my abortion and after taking plenty of iron supplements, I did the only thing I thought might make things better: I spoke about my abortion on stage.
Abortion is not a natural laughing matter. It can be divisive, and I knew that talking about it would dig into the feelings others in the audience had about abortion. I knew most people could relate to it in some way. So I just told it as it happened, and I was surprised by how it resonated with people of all ages. There was a universal truth in my story: abortion is harder than we’re told, and women are often held responsible for decisions made by men.
Last week, I During my cervical cancer screening, the nurse noticed my anxiety, and I explained that I’d been feeling anxious in medical settings since having an abortion last year.
She stopped, gently placed her hand on mine and asked, “Are you OK?” Her eyes were filled with genuine compassion. “Sometimes it’s harder than you expect,” she continued. For the first time in weeks, I began to cry. Not because I was sad again, but because I wished she had been there that day when the doctor showed me the screen. What was about to happen wouldn’t be easy, but importantly, she let me know it was normal, and that I wasn’t alone in that complicated pain. And, maybe, she even slapped him.
I am glad I had the abortion and now know I made the right decision, but the streamlined process before, during and after the abortion left me experiencing a lot of grief completely alone.
Until now, I’ve hesitated to talk about how abortion affected me, both physiologically and psychologically, for fear that my words would be misconstrued or, even worse, that I would be perceived as anti-abortion. But my abortion affected me deeply, and I want to be able to say so without worrying that I’ve let women down. I hope the world will allow women to be nuanced in wanting these rights, while also talking about the pain that comes with it.
Grace Campbell is in Edinburgh. The show will perform at the Fringe this summer, followed by a European tour. Disgrace Campbell.
If you are experiencing these problems, contact the UK Pregnancy Advice Service (bpas.org Japanese)
Styling: Hope Lawrie, Hair: Charlie McEwen, Make-up: Lou Artford, Photographer Assistant: Alex Pall
