Happy 28th September!
Rewind back to 1967 – a new dawn, abortion* in Great Britain becomes legal … well, almost! Superimposed on an ancient piece of Victorian legislation, the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act, the new Abortion Act makes the procedure accessible – but only in some circumstances, such as securing the agreement of two doctors that continuing with the pregnancy would be more damaging to the ‘woman’s’ mental or physical health.
Abortion is, in theory, still imprisonable and, last year, we saw it happen in practice too, when a woman was jailed for procuring her own abortion pills during lockdown!
Shockingly, the ‘67 Act was never extended to Northern Ireland, where, in spite of paying the same taxes, people who needed an abortion had to travel to mainland Britain and pay with their own money for a medical procedure in the UK. That finally changed when the 2020 ‘Abortion Regulations’ came into effect - more than half a century later!
One of the fundamental problems is that abortion isn’t considered healthcare. Imagine anyone needing two doctors signatures to have a tooth removed or for lifesaving cancer treatment. The fact that abortion is ‘normal’, that it is common hasn’t quite entered the public psyche, because it remains in criminal law and continues to be heavily stigmatised.
People who have abortions are almost expected to feel some kind of shame and sadness – which they might and is ok, but is by no means a prerequisite. And, on the other hand, those who oppose abortion and want it banned, wag their fingers while spouting out lies and misinformation about fetal viability or adverse health impacts. Yet, in spite of their extremist opinions they are afforded significant air time, distorting the debate and the reality of the abortion experience, and imposing their restrictive views on others’ bodies, lives and futures.
These are just some of the reasons why abortion should be decriminalised.
I grew up in a country where abortion was illegal, and, when, despite having had excellent sex and relationships education at school, I accidentally got pregnant, I had to scramble around to find enough money quickly so I could catch a train across the border to Holland to terminate my unwanted pregnancy. I was 18, I’d just started university and I knew I never wanted children. Having that abortion was the biggest game changer for me and absolutely saved my life. It also made me determined that anyone should have equal access to free, non-judgemental sexual health services, including safe abortion, so they can make the best decision for themselves … and we’re a long way off.**
I was very lucky. Many people around the world finding themselves in this exact same situation aren’t. Mostly, they are forced to carry the pregnancy to term or put their life at risk with an unsafe procedure - precisely what the anti-abortion movement advocate, because ultimately, abortions will always take place.
Luckily for some, there is a third way - access to cash or abortion pills via an abortion fund, like Supporting Abortion For Everyone (SAFE) or a feminist activist organization working on access to abortion, like Women Help Women.
SAFE is a US-style abortion fund, the brain child of European abortion activists Mara Clarke, who set up Abortion Support Network, the first abortion fund in the UK; and Kasia Roszak ten Hove, one of the co-founders of Abortion Network Amsterdam, the first second trimester abortion network in mainland Europe. SAFE is the first charity registered in mainland Europe funding abortions. Abortion funds play vital role in the reproductive justice movement by providing both direct financial and logistical assistance to individuals seeking reproductive care, including abortion.
Mara and I go back a long way. We met in 2005. She had just arrived in the UK, when she attended an event I was hosting in the House of Commons, at the height of the last anti-choice campaign to reduce the abortion time limit and we became for ever abortion buddies. Mara is a tireless activist and feminist badass who has achieved what few thought possible: she set up an abortion fund to support women in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where abortion was illegal at the time, to travel to the UK to access the procedure.
She started off with an old laptop, a mobile phone and her trademark determination. She built the Abortion Support Network from scratch with a huge vision and it became an effective, well-connected, highly respected charity that helped people get abortions and stuck to fingers up to the authorities and anyone who tried to stop them. It was nothing short of an abortion revolution.
SAFE is a different bag. While the key principle is the same – supporting people who want or need an abortion to actually get one, it does so on a larger scale and by funding activists who enable abortions. In addition, SAFE works to build pathways between abortions and people who want abortions, it collects and shares knowledge and best practices, and works with champions to advocate for abortion access across Europe.
It operates in a different, more challenging environment. It’s been more than two years since the landmark Roe vs Wade was rescinded, a process that had been decades in the making and shows just how well funded and organised the anti-abortion machine is – and not just in the U.S.! They operate globally.
Politically, Europe is changing rapidly. We saw it in the UK over summer and it's happening across the continent, the far-right with its racist, Islamophobic, pro-natalist, anti-abortion, anti-gender justice, anti-migrant rhetoric is on the rise. It will have serious consequences for our human rights more broadly - making organisations like SAFE all the more important.
Thankfully, the world has a very long history of people helping people accessing abortions, and until abortion is fully decriminalised and available to everyone, everywhere, no questions asked, we will continue – and our solidarity knows no border.
Here are three ways in which you can express solidarity with SAFE this International Safe Abortion Day - and every day:
If you or anyone you know needs to talk about abortion – you can call the Abortion Talk talkline.
*While this piece is predominantly about access to safe, free, legal abortion, I fully recognise the need to frame this discussion as part of the broader reproductive justice framework.
**I want to add an important caveat. Women of colour and migrant women have long reported a very different experience. In both her books, Border Nation and Why Would Feminists Trust the Police, Leah Cowan, recounts the eugenicist past of the reproductive justice movement and how, in the 1960’s Black feminists, didn’t relate to the idea of ‘reproductive choice’ because they felt that ‘contraception and abortion were being encouraged for Black women as a method of repressing Black families and limiting the Black population’.
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