This is my third post for Smutathon 2018! Eight of us are spending 12 hours today furiously writing erotica, blogging about sex, taking filthy photos, and generally producing smut in all its glorious forms, to raise money for the Abortion Support Network. To find out more, to enter our sex toy raffle, and most importantly to donate to an excellent cause, click here!
This is my abortion story.
It is neither a long story, not an especially traumatic one.
In the summer of 2011, I got someone pregnant. We were in a relationship at the time, though it had entered the sort of terminal decline that is only really apparent in hindsight. Frequent arguments. Pained negotiation of a hundred different changes – big and small – that we each thought might improve things, followed by negotiation of the negotiations. Break-up sex and make-up sex, and all the silences in-between.
Basically, things weren’t great. After one period of separation that lasted the best part of a month, we met at Emma’s house to talk things over (again). At some point in proceedings, we went upstairs and had sex – or maybe we fucked on her sofa, I can’t remember. Either way, it was always what we did best. Even in the worst moments, the chemistry between us was off-the-charts good.
As a mark of how close we were to breaking up for good, she’d come off long-term birth control at some point in that month away from each other. “It’s ok,” she said. “I’ll go get the morning-after pill tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”
And it was. Until we had sex again the following day.
It probably says a lot – none of it good – about sex education in this country that even at 30 years old (and 33 in her case), we both sort of assumed that the morning-after pill would ‘cover us’ for the next day or two. All those hormones suddenly flooding through the body – no way you could pregnant again right away, surely?
Uh, yeah. About that.
Two weeks later, Emma missed her period. Three different pregnancy tests all came back positive, and suddenly all the baby steps we’d taken since our latest reunion got washed away like footprints in the sand at high tide.
We weren’t in a place to have a child together, and I wasn’t ready for parental responsibility full stop. Emma was briefly torn – an only child herself, she’d always been ambivalent about the prospect of having kids of her own, but at 33 she wanted to give the idea proper consideration before rejecting it. After a couple of days, she told me she didn’t want to go ahead with the pregnancy and I breathed a heavy, silent sigh of relief.
At the time, there was no NHS-funded abortion clinic in Oxford, so we booked an appointment with BPAS in Reading. It was early enough in the pregnancy that we could schedule a medical abortion, rather than having to wait for a surgical procedure. The clinic was able to see us very quickly, which helped more than you’d think; even though we knew it was the right thing to do, an uncomfortable sense of anxiety and socially-imposed guilt ran through a lot of the conversations we had in the days before the appointment, so we were both relieved when the morning itself arrived.
The atmosphere in the car on the drive to Reading was relaxed but quiet. We listened to music, talked about a party we were attending that weekend, and stared out at the South Oxfordshire countryside. When we arrived at the clinic, they calmly explained everything that would happen that day. First a consultation appointment, then a wait of 3-4 hours before returning to take the two pills.
Throughout the entire process, the staff there were professional, non-judgmental, and unfailingly kind. We were given the opportunity to ask whatever questions we wanted during the consultation appointment, and they went out of their way to present us with information in a neutral way. This was merely how things were – everything that followed was completely up to us.
To kill time before Emma took the two pills, we went to the Vue multiplex behind the Oracle shopping centre. The new X-Men movie was showing, so we settled down for two hours of pure escapism, after which we emerged – stumbling and blinded by jarring afternoon sunlight – back into the real world. Seven years later, I rarely think of that time, but when I do it’s usually prompted by the unbreakable association it now has for me with the X-Men franchise.
The second appointment was very short. The nurse briefly checked we still wanted to go ahead with the termination, then Emma took the pills and we left. The whole procedure cost us a little over £400, which we split between us.
Emma felt fine on the drive back to Oxford, but went to bed shortly afterwards with mild stomach cramps. She bled briefly, though less than either of us had expected. We’d been home for an hour or two when she felt well enough to get out of bed and eat the dinner I’d cooked while she dozed. Later that evening, we had sex – slow, tender, oddly thrilling sex – before curling up together to sleep.
Emma and I split up for good a few weeks later. The abortion played a minor role, but only because it had forced us to confront a reality that we’d both actively resisted: as good as things could be between us, we ultimately weren’t willing to commit to each other in a serious or long-term way. We simply weren’t right as a couple. If we’d been forced by law to have a child together, that would still have been the case. The consequences would just have been a whole lot worse – for us and our kid.
The abortion process was not one I danced through on light, carefree feet. It made me think about what I wanted from life, and how I really felt about fatherhood, as something more than just a hypothetical future state. However, at no point did it feel like we were doing something wrong. To dissuade or prevent Emma from having an abortion would have felt like a violation of her fundamental right to exercise ownership over her body – and that would’ve been true whether it was me, her family, the state, the church, or a social pressure group doing the dissuading.
Her body, her choice.
I’m grateful I live in a country where access to abortion is legal, safe, and (relatively) affordable. I’m grateful that my abortion story is not a traumatic one, and that it will be a story recognised and shared by many of my peers.
I want other men – and more importantly, all women – to experience the same level of access to abortion, if/when they need it, as Emma and I did seven years ago. For them to have the same choices available to them – about their bodies and their lives – as we did.
That’s why I’m raising money for Abortion Support Network today. I hope you’ll consider donating.