Why abortion is a men’s issue too

What getting unexpectedly pregnant made me reconsider about how we discuss reproductive rights

**TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses pregnancy and abortion**

Life changes in an instant, an ordinary instant… – Joan Didion, A Year Of Magical Thinking

While the Christmas parties were in full swing and London was moving to the rhythm of an endless playlist of festive tunes, I found myself in my own entirely un-festive bubble, contemplating a future that looked very different to the one I’d envisioned just a few days earlier. I had been feeling off, my body knotted and unusually tender, my emotions on a perpetual rollercoaster. While I’d put it down to my impending period, something felt… different.

I did a pregnancy test purely to put it out of my mind and reassure myself for the holidays that everything was normal. But as I hurriedly got ready for a dinner I was already running 15 minutes late for, I saw the bright blue cross come into lurid view in the test window. Positive. A wave of panic engulfed me. This couldn’t be, I thought. There was no way. I did another test to be certain and sure enough the result was the same. Uncertain what to do or how to react, I shoved some lipstick and blush into my handbag and rushed to the tube. When I arrived at the dinner, flushed and disorientated, I ran straight into a friend who squeezed me tight and asked: Babe, how are you?! Great, I responded. SO, well. No babe, how are you really, he replied in earnest. You don’t want to know, I thought, and ran to the toilet where I burst into tears.

The days that followed were a discombobulated blur as I walked the halls of my old life feeling like a new woman I was not yet ready to become. It felt odd to me that everyone I crossed paths with didn’t automatically know that a potential new life was brewing within me. How could something so huge for my body, so cataclysmic, be happening so quietly, unbeknownst to the rest of the world? I wanted to tell everyone. To shout from the rooftops ‘I’M PREGNANT!!!’. Except that I didn’t want to be pregnant at all. This wasn’t supposed to have had happen.

Getting unexpectedly pregnant in your thirties brings with it a spate of complicated feelings because by this age you are painfully aware of how difficult it is for so many to conceive. You probably have an idea of whether you do want a baby at some point or not (I do). And you have likely been unable to avoid the onslaught of news articles and social media posts about women’s fertility falling off that goddam cliff at 35, the age at which women become so-called ‘geriatric’ mothers.

If you’re a woman in your thirties the message is clear: you are running out of time. Egg freezing is expensive, but advertised as a necessary insurance policy if you’re not ready to have kids just yet. Ads for IVF litter the tube and fill your Instagram feed.

Yes there is a cacophony of noise at all times reminding you of how this future you were sold as your destiny growing up, might well be slipping rapidly out of reach.

Typically, I do not feel kowtowed by this fertility scaremongering. Not least because my mum had me at 39 and my sister at 40, so I’ve grown up assuming that if I do have children, as I’d like to, it’ll be in the latter half of my thirties, when I’ve established my career and built strong foundations for the life I want to bring a family into. But falling accidentally pregnant threw up a litany of worrying what ifs: what if I don’t get the chance to have a baby again? What if terminating this pregnancy destroys my fertility somehow (this is incredibly unlikely)? What if it doesn’t work out with the guy I’m seeing and I never meet anyone else again? Will I forever look back and think… ‘if only…’?

Image: Florence Pugh - We Live in Time

These questions swirled around my brain for days, all while I did the only thing I knew what to do: get organised. I called the hospital and booked the first available consultation for an abortion. Because however scared I suddenly felt about the loss of this newly presented potential future, I knew full well that it was not a future I was ready for. I am not prepared for a baby now: neither domestically (I live in an over-priced flat share with a friend); professionally (I have so much more I feel I need to do before a family becomes even remotely feasible), financially (I don’t even have a pension started yet, let’s leave it at that) nor romantically (I have only been dating the guy I’m currently seeing for a few months).

One in three women will get an abortion at some point in her life. And living in the UK I felt immensely grateful that I had access to such a service, complete with incredible care both medically and emotionally. I felt entirely supported by the nurses who led me through the process and who allayed every fear I had, all while ensuring I was making the right decision for me, free from pressure or coercion. What a privilege.

Except, it shouldn’t be a privilege.

It should be a right, everywhere. How can it not be? Access to abortion is the fundamental tenet of a woman’s bodily autonomy. Moreover, the health risks associated with pregnancy are far greater than those associated with abortion. According to one study in 2020 staying pregnant was 35–39 times deadlier than induced abortion in America. It puts huge pressure on a woman’s body and there are risks with giving birth vaginally, while a C-section constitutes major surgery. And that’s just the birth. To state the glaringly obvious, having a baby changes your life as it changes your body. It is the single biggest decision anyone can make in their lifetime and as I look around at my new-parent-friends I am filled with admiration for how they do it because it is one helluva (unpaid, under-appreciated) job. No one should be forced to go through with a pregnancy they don’t want or aren’t prepared for.

And so, I felt lucky to be in the UK, but all-too-aware of how different things might be if I still lived in America (I am half American) where reproductive healthcare is being gutted. Just yesterday America’s largest anti-abortion rally, March for Life (which really should be termed: March Against Women’s Lives) took place in Washington, supported by President Trump and his VP JD Vance.

America hates women

A few days after I found out I was pregnant, North Carolina reintroduced a bill that would make abortion at any stage of pregnancy equivalent to murder under state law. By redefining “person” under the state’s criminal law to include a fertilized egg, anyone who obtains the procedure could potentially face the death penalty, or life in prison, for doing so. Since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in June 2022, South Carolina has been among the most aggressive states to restrict abortion and while State Rep. Rob Harris (R) originally introduced the same bill in 2023, the idea that lawmakers would consider using capital punishment on people who get abortions sparked such outrage it went nowhere, and several Republicans who had initially co-sponsored the bill quickly removed their names. Now, emboldened no doubt by Trump, against whom there have been numerous accusations of sexual assault and harassment, being returned to the White House, the bill now has six co-sponsors. Incidentally, they are all white men. Go figure.

I would have been horrified by this piece of news on any given day, but during that week in particular it felt, obviously, personal. My first thought was of the deep hypocrisy at the heart of such legislation. It doesn’t make any sense to value unborn life so much that you are happy to see women being killed for accessing reproductive healthcare. Why is a small cluster of cells more valuable than the life of a living, breathing woman?

The hard right, anti-choice movement in America also doesn’t seem to care much about life once a child is actually born since the infant mortality rate in the Palmetto State is 7.3 deaths for every 1,000 live births. That rate is much higher than the U.S. average of 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births, and nearly twice as high as the average rate in OECD countries. So what are these anti-choicers doing to help prevent the death of children? Why aren’t they focusing their energy on that?

If they really cared about the sanctity of life, they would also be putting their energy into ensuring that the children who are born are looked after, are fed, that young mothers are supported, that a proper welfare state is in place to support people, that good healthcare is provided to everyone based on need and not income. But as we know, that isn’t the case at all. This is America. So a ruling like this reminds us of just one thing: the anti-choice movement is nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt to control women through controlling our bodies.

Where are the men at?

But as my mind moved from rage to the perennial question of ‘what next?’ I thought of all the men who have benefitted from women getting abortions. Of all the men whose lives have been able to continue as normal because a woman they got pregnant was able to access a termination. Where then are the men when it comes to protesting against such flagrant attacks on women’s reproductive healthcare as we are witnessing in America? Where is the male outrage? The indignation? Why are they not rising up in anger as women are, in their droves, constantly, at the onslaught of news regarding the roll back of reproductive rights in America, knowing all too well that the ideas which spawn such regressive policy-making across the pond are contagious and are already spreading here too.

Just a few months ago, the leader of the Reform party, Nigel Farage, said MPs should look at rolling back Britain’s abortion limit from 24 weeks, in a signal that he could try to open up a debate about women’s reproductive rights here in the UK. (Abortion was made legal in the UK through the Abortion Act 1967.) It is worth highlighting that in 2022, 88% of abortions were performed at under 10 weeks and just 1-2% were performed at 20 weeks.

As women, we should not feel like this is our battle to fight alone. That this is a mantle we must carry solely with our sisters. That an abortion is something we have to just ‘get on with’ ourselves.

I felt lucky in that I was supported and cared for during the entire process personally. But I am surrounded by friends who were not. Friends whose partners didn’t show up to any appointment and weren’t there during the actual abortion. Just the other day a woman told me that her now ex boyfriend wasn’t present during the entire process and then broke up with her straight after the procedure, saying the experience had been more traumatic for him than for her.

We need more education around our reproductive rights that places specific focus on abortion and is designed to bring men firmly into this conversation. Pregnancy doesn’t happen alone, (generally speaking) it takes two people and those two people are equally responsible for whatever happens next.

You’re not alone

If you’re reading this and you yourself have gone through something similar recently, or have had any brush with the specific grief and sadness that can surround pregnancy: you are not alone. In fact you are in great company because there are so many of us who have had to walk this unexpected pathway. I am here for you. And moreover I am here to remind you that there is no shame in what you’ve gone through or what you’re going through. Break the taboo around talking about this incredibly common experience and topic and let a friend be there for you in this time in which you need them most.

The fall out from an abortion isn't just physical, it is emotional too. I was clear in my decision and supported throughout, but that didn’t prevent me from being hit by waves of grief in the weeks that followed. I found myself bursting into tears for no reason. Sobbing at a film that highlighted pregnancy. Feeling overwhelmed by emotion during a conversation with a friend about their own family. These feelings are normal - it’s a huge thing to go through, but feeling supported throughout makes a huge difference.

Finally, if you’re reading this and you don’t agree with abortion, I wholeheartedly respect your choice not to access a termination yourself, ever. That is your prerogative and I will defend to the death every single woman’s right to bodily autonomy. All that I ask is for you to do the same. For you to recognise that no one should be forced to go through with a pregnancy they do not want.

I don’t regret my decision. I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to exercise control over my body at a time in which so many women the world over are being denied what should be our basic human right. But I do now feel an increased urgency to redouble my efforts to support the brilliant work of organisations like the Abortion Support Network, who provide critical support for women in Europe who need to travel in order to access a termination. I just hope that my male peers will join me in doing the same and recognise how abortion isn’t just a woman’s issues, it's a man’s issue too.

*If you or anyone you know needs support in accessing an abortion contact the Abortion Support Network via this link