i love abortion

be gone, pro-lifers, you have no power here

As any real feminist is, I am proudly pro-choice.

It’s a comforting thought that everyone around me would be supportive if the worst happened and I needed an abortion. One of my biggest fears is getting pregnant and having someone close to me think I should be forced to keep it, or worse, express that they would only allow it under “exceptional circumstances”, meaning sexual assault.

It’s a strange expectation that, in order to maintain my autonomy, there are people that think I must be violated first. It’s as though they want it to happen so that they can feel better about a choice that isn’t theirs to make in the first place. Frankly, if you’re that invested in other women’s bodies that you think you can have an opinion over what they choose to do, then not only are you fundamentally not a feminist, but you’re a creep. Don’t think about other people’s reproductive systems. I cannot believe that has to be said in the year 2026.

This isn’t an introduction to a post about my abortion, as I haven’t had one. It’s more an introduction to my personal thoughts on the matter. I am certainly a live-and-let-live type, and I like to leave people to do as they please, which had led me to say years ago that, while I would never have an abortion, I would never judge someone else for having one. Now that I am more mature, however, I can think further ahead than the resultant cute little baby. It would be a lifetime commitment that I don’t currently have the ability to make, and so in all honesty I would get rid of any pregnancy at the first sight of it.

It’s funny, because for all intents and purposes I should feel ready for children. I’ve been in a really good relationship for four years, and we’re looking at places to settle in permanently because we both want to stay in one place for the rest of our lives. I have an amazing career that I used to dream of, and it just so happens to pay extremely well, and my partner owns his own business which is thriving. Even with that, we have a lot of free time. So we have money, we have love, and we have a really good attitude towards raising children. If something were to happen, we should be well equipped to handle it, but the thing is that we don’t want to.

I make no secret that my family has been well acquainted with the care system. I’ve had whole hosts of cousins taken into care and adopted out and disappearing. My parents almost adopted one of them, but the situation was so bad that they couldn’t allow the baby to be known to be with any family members at all, for the safety of my parents and their other children. It actually led to the social workers telling us all that the baby had died with a foster family, a cot death, which turned out to be a lie. He is still alive now— one of my cousins (his sister) has since met him, but the whole thing was traumatising for my family. To us, this little boy was going to be a member of our family, my brother, and we don’t know why that social worker thought it was better to tell us he had died than to just say we couldn’t have him and he had to go into protection.

All this to say I’m more aware of the system than a lot of people, and it’s led to me wanting to be a foster carer. I’ve heard horror stories from both my mum and dad’s side, about horrible people that only take on the role to make money or to have access to children to abuse. I want to make a difference there, and after years of considering it, I have a partner that wants me to run with it. We are now looking at homes with one or two spare bedrooms to accommodate children that need the good environment that we could provide.

As far as our own children, however, we want to see how the world turns first. It’s a scary place, and it’s turning more right-wing each day. As immigrants, we need to factor that into things. Sure, being foreigners isn’t too bad now, but it does come with not being allowed to work (legally, they can’t not hire immigrants based on their country of origin, but we all know that’s what happens) and constant comments about us not being from there, and suggestions that we “go home”. Do I want to subject a child to that? Not really, no. The thing is, a child is not an accessory. It is not a cute little thing to name and then parade around. It is a tiny person that will one day have to exist outside of its home, and until the outside of my home is a place I would want my child to be, I will not be having children, and if that means having a medical procedure, then so be it. I am grateful to have that option should I ever need it.

And obviously, we have taken precautions, and I have the implant. Something that bothers me is that birth control is the woman’s responsibility most of the time. Sure, men can carry condoms, but if that doesn’t work then the instinct is to look at the woman as if she should have known better. As is always the case with Ben, however, whatever we do is done as a partnership. He accompanied me to both appointments (the initial meeting and the procedure itself) and came with me to buy the equipment. I didn’t know you had to do that in France, and it felt weird to have surgical blades on my person, but I digress.

In the waiting room, he took leaflets about my contraception, and I explained the science to him. He winced at the blood part, and the stick-under-my-skin part, but he thanked me for the education nonetheless. He also ensured I didn’t lift a finger for days afterwards, even doing my seatbelt for me in the car and feeding me the treats he got me by hand like I was a horse. He also learned about innovations in regards to male contraception, and we wondered if they would be on the market before we decided to have children so he could handle it instead. During the procedure, my nurse mentioned how rare it was for my partner to be with me, and that made me feel uneasy for all the other women who go to her that aren’t as lucky as me. It was done in fifteen minutes, and then I was babied for days after.

I think men should stop being shielded from what birth control is. When we had our sexual health classes in secondary school, the girls and boys were separated and the boys learned nothing about it beyond condoms and vasectomies. They weren’t taught that a pill isn’t just a pill, and that it must be taken every day at the same time or it won’t be as effective. They weren’t taught that we have to take hormones, and that we physically alter our bodies to prevent pregnancy. All that did was lead them to think it was no big deal, and that it therefore made sense for women to do the right thing. I’m fortunate that the only side effect I have is weight gain, which I can manage quite easily. I will always advocate for the implant, as everyone I know that has one does. It’s above and beyond the best method in terms of efficiency, and as someone with ADHD it’s so helpful to not have to think about it.

But the thing is, I’m lucky. I have a good partner that would never tamper with my birth control, one that agrees with me that now isn’t the right time even though he will be nearing his thirties when this one is done and we plan on having another one after it runs out. Not all women have that. Some have partners that want to trap them in a relationship, some are in situations where they can’t afford birth control and therefore certainly can’t afford children. When that is the case, it is necessary that there is an option for them. Frankly, you can’t ban abortion, you can only ban safe ones, and that is what pro-life people need to remember. There are enough children waiting to be adopted, so the whole “just adopt it out” doesn’t count. Also, if you believe life begins at conception, then maybe stop using birth control yourself (yes, including condoms) and either practice abstinence or have children of your own, as it is also wrong to not allow life to form, right?

If you’re not ready to do that, then maybe you should rethink your values.

I will have children one day, two of them. Ben and I have already discussed it all, and picked our baby names and decided on our parenting style and the boundaries we will have, but that is just because we are planners. One day means when we are ready, not when there’s an expectation that we should do it. Yes, it is selfish that we would rather enjoy our twenties and go on holidays and live a quiet life with enough sleep. That is why we aren’t parents; we want to be selfish for a while longer and that isn’t what a child needs.

I wrote a note on here a few months ago that really angered pro-lifers. It was about me helping a few other girls access abortions when we were teens, and they tried to shame me about it. I was called all sorts of names, had my appearance mocked, and I was told by one genius that he hopes I have a miscarriage. I enjoyed the debate for a while, but when that’s the calibre of intelligence you’re up against, it does get boring eventually. I don’t regret any of it, of course. I will always express my opinion and I will always hope that a discussion stems from it. If you disagree with me, and we talk about it, I never intend to mock you. I simply want to convince you of my side, and I am also willing to be convinced in return.

The truth is, I actually used to be pro-life. It was only for a short time, but red-pill YouTube content was rampant when I was thirteen. If LeafyIsHere, Onision and Ben Shapiro mean nothing to you, then congratulations, you escaped the cesspit. However, as soon as I looked at the actual scientific facts, I realised that they were all wrong, and that there is no magical tiny baby that is fully formed. That’s just a tactic to pull on your heartstrings.

I was sent out of class once, too. I didn’t go to a religious school, so instead of Religious Studies we did Beliefs, Philosophy and Ethics. I would have loved BPE if it weren’t for my teacher. She was a bony little woman with beady eyes that was allegedly in her early thirties even though we had all assumed she was in her late forties, and she was one of three teachers in my entire life that did not like me. In any other class I would have understood, because her issue was that I spoke my mind, but this was a class based on discussion.

Anyway, one day she played a short film called Little Stars, which is about a teenage girl that magically gets pregnant after one encounter and has to choose whether or not to keep the baby. There were no other options presented such as adoption, either; she has to have the baby and keep it forever or abort it. It splits in two parts depending on her choice, and this is where my issue came with it. It was labelled as a balanced view on the subject, but it was genuinely pro-life propaganda.

If she has the baby, then she loses her role of Juliet and her co-star and sort of partner goes off with someone else, but she also has never been happier! She doesn’t need him anyway, because her mum and younger brother are super happy to pitch in, and she’s even invited into her school’s health class to talk about being a teen mum. She’s ecstatic about her decision, and aside from leaving school for a while everything’s rosy. If she gets an abortion, however, she loses her boyfriend anyway and then has a mental breakdown when she sees a baby at work. Her whole life is ruined, and her mum can’t even look her in the eye.

That’s how the movie ended, too. Cue me being swiftly removed for responding to “so what did you all think?” with “well, that wasn’t very balanced at all.”. I think it would have been a good discussion that day, but I’ll never know because I spent it standing in the hallway explaining to passing teachers that I’d been sent there, none of them understanding why. After that, nobody else wanted to say anything, so we were all effectively silence. Jokes on you, Miss Boyd, because you only encouraged me to be someone vulnerable girls could go to in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I know it isn’t an easy decision. I know there are so many reasons why people are against it for themselves, but that’s just it. These are choices that we should be making for ourselves, and not for anyone else. Maybe some of the people I admire most on here have different views to me, and I can look past that. What I can’t handle, however, is the attitude of not agreeing with something, and therefore saying that nobody else can have it even though it affects nobody else. Maybe abortion is indeed murder, but that wouldn’t change my mind even if it were true. I do not want a child, and I have done what I can to prevent it. If the worst happens, then I will deal with it as I please. It does not affect anyone but myself and my partner, who backs me completely.

Honestly, if you take issue with that, I would love to know why.