JANET STREET-PORTER: Why women everywhere deserve a better choice than I had as pregnant schoolgirl

What have the women of Georgia done to deserve a law which removes their right to decide what’s best for their own bodies?

The ‘heartbeat’ bill passed last week makes it illegal to have an abortion after 6 weeks (the time doctors say they can detect life in the womb) and will become law next January. Georgia follows other states – Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Iowa and North Dakota – in bowing to the right wing lobby and restricting a woman’s right to a legal termination.

These reactionary laws drive poor and very young women underground (not the middle classes, who can afford to travel), to illegal local abortionists, who can endanger their lives and potentially ruin their chances of ever having kids when the time is right.

I feel so strongly about this, because – as a seventeen year old teenager in London – I was stupid enough to get pregnant by a long-standing boyfriend, at a time when it was almost impossible to get an abortion without telling your parents, seeing a doctor and a psychiatrist.

Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, center, signs legislation, Tuesday, May 7, in Atlanta, banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected

These reactionary laws drive poor and very young women underground (not the middle classes, who can afford to travel), to illegal local abortionists, who can endanger their lives and potentially ruin their chances of ever having kids when the time is right. Pictured, Janet-Street Porter in her early teenage years

These reactionary laws drive poor and very young women underground (not the middle classes, who can afford to travel), to illegal local abortionists, who can endanger their lives and potentially ruin their chances of ever having kids when the time is right. Pictured, Janet-Street Porter in her early teenage years

Contraception wasn’t easily available, and I had exams to sit a few weeks away. 

There was no way I could tell my mother, our relationship wasn’t that close. I panicked, went to clubs and bought drugs which were supposed to precipitate a miscarriage – all they did was make me sick.

Eventually, through a friend, I got the phone number of a woman in north London who performed illegal abortions for £25. 

I took the money out of my savings and arranged to visit late one afternoon when my parents had gone away for a long weekend and I had the day off school.

I will never forget the long walk from the train station to a run-down building by a parade of shops. I rang a bell, went upstairs, handed over the money. I was told to take off my knickers and lie down on a kitchen table in a run down apartment. I was quaking with fear.

The actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano wants women to go on a sex strike in protest

The actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano wants women to go on a sex strike in protest

I won’t go into detail about the next ten minutes but it was horribly painful. I remember the woman wore a dirty apron and rubber washing up gloves. I staggered back to the station and the journey home passed in a blur. I had confided in one friend, who came around to my house, but couldn’t do much to help as I spent much of the next twenty four hours in the bathroom, bleeding profusely, with terrible stomach cramps.

Amazingly, my health was not damaged. A couple of years later, I had another abortion, this time in a private clinic, performed by qualified doctors. After that, I always made sure I had contraception and refused to have sex without a condom.

My experiences took place over fifty years ago, and yet women in Northern Ireland still face the same ordeal. Unlike the UK, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and later if there is are health risks to mother or unborn child, Northern Ireland is still a country in the dark ages, a place where – incredibly- the life-changing ordeal of rape or incest are not circumstances which automatically entitle women to qualify for an abortion. 

Bette Midler has also offered her support for the sex strike protest. The television star Jameela Jamil tweeted her own experience- ‘I had an abortion when I was young and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want and wasn’t ready for emotionally, psychologically and financially’

Bette Midler has also offered her support for the sex strike protest. The television star Jameela Jamil tweeted her own experience- ‘I had an abortion when I was young and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want and wasn’t ready for emotionally, psychologically and financially’

Terminations can only be performed when there is a serious risk to the mother’s life, or her mental health. The High Court in Belfast has ruled this is incompatible with human rights legislation, but the law still stands.

The British government – with a female Prime Minister who should know better – is shamed by its consistent refusal to hold these backward-thinking Ulster politicians to account.

In the South, a vociferous pro-abortion campaign led to a referendum and a vote to change the law in May 2018. Northern Ireland and Malta remain the only EU countries refusing to allow women the right to choose what action to take if they find themselves pregnant. 

This means that the most vulnerable young women (most are aged between 20 and 24) have to leave home and friends and travel hundreds of miles, at a time when will be distraught and distressed.

In 2017, over 900 girls crossed to England from Northern Ireland for terminations, the highest number for six years.

If I had gone ahead with my pregnancy, I would have ruined my career, and limited my choices. What I did was right for me, a naïve teenager with her whole life lying ahead. Pictured: Janet Street-Porter pictured in the 1960s

If I had gone ahead with my pregnancy, I would have ruined my career, and limited my choices. What I did was right for me, a naïve teenager with her whole life lying ahead. Pictured: Janet Street-Porter pictured in the 1960s

In March 2018, the British government set up a hotline to make it easier for women from Ulster to make an appointment through the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and have a termination in England. In three months, 342 did so. One girl was just 12 years old.

My journey to the female abortionist in a shabby flat in North London in the 1960’s was bad enough, but it’s depressing to consider that over half a century later, a pre-teen schoolgirl is forced to travel across the Irish Sea to another country to have a procedure any decent doctor should have authorised without a second thought.

The new law in Georgia has caused outrage in the USA. A letter signed by over 50 actors and performers calls for a boycott of the state and says productions should be moved elsewhere.

The actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano wants women to go on a sex strike in protest and Bette Midler has offered her support. The television star Jameela Jamil tweeted her own experience- ‘I had an abortion when I was young and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want and wasn’t ready for emotionally, psychologically and financially’.

I would not have used the word ‘best’ because there’s nothing positive about having an abortion. I blamed myself for being stupid and still do. 

But if I had gone ahead with my pregnancy, I would have ruined my career, and limited my choices. What I did was right for me, a naïve teenager with her whole life lying ahead.

In the modern world, all women should be able to choose for themselves – that’s a basic human right, which should not be determined by which US state or which bit of the UK you have the misfortune to reside in.

Forget a sex ban, women need to start attacking the female politicians who are traitors to the sisterhood by allowing these cruel and archaic laws to remain on the statute book. Theresa May, I’m talking about you.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk