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Oh, right?

I felt entirely alone’: comedian Grace Campbell on the aftermath of her abortion

Well, there was one less around.

When Grace Campbell decided to terminate her pregnancy, she felt relief at being able to exercise a right so many women had fought for. But nothing prepared her for the depression that came after. Here, the comedian reflects on the physical and emotional toll

Ho Hum.

An excellent exampole of a male and female difference. She’s looking for confirmation, assurance, empathy. Men are saying, well, don’t do that then. Not all men, obviously, but that’s a v male response to this all the same.

19 thoughts on “Oh, right?”

  1. This bit is interesting:

    “Newsflash: men don’t like wearing condoms. One night, because of my desire to please a stranger in the moment, I had agreed to forego it. ”

    A desire to please strangers is, to be fair, quite laudable. Greeting fellow dog-walkers. Returning your tray and crockery in a busy cafe. Helping a pensioner struggling with a shopping trolley. Allowing some random grunting exploiter to ejaculate into your body.

  2. ’After an intense seven weeks, post-abortion, the bleeding had finally stopped. But the persistent crying, self-hatred and grief followed me everywhere I went.’

    Gosh, it’s almost like you were lied to and it wasn’t ’just a clump of cells’ after all, eh love?

  3. I would have thought this was the classic female desire to have both her cake & to have eaten it. Something men have to deal with every day of their lives. She wanted both to have been aborted but also to have the child. Perfectly normal female behaviour. Next subject…?

  4. Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millars daughter. With that parentage, one cannot be surprised at her wonky moral compass.

  5. The Meissen Bison

    But here I was, 29 years old, floored by a grief so intense it scared me.

    Imagine how the baby felt about it.

  6. So all those women were fighting for your right “to please a stranger”. I think many of them would be disappointed in the way you chose to interpret their efforts.

  7. Julia + ∞

    Recusant – Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millars daughter

    I wonder if they enjoyed reading about how their daughter killed their grandchild so she could concentrate on her important trapeze artist career.

    You only have to look at the upcoming American elections to see we are being confronted with loud, powerful men who are trying to occupy our basic right to choose. Women are being controlled and their every move watched, because of the male obsession with taking our autonomy away.

    If you do evil things, such as kill your children, you deserve to have your autonomy taken away.

  8. Theophrastus (2066)

    Whoever risked impregnating her was socially irresponsible: she should never be allowed to reproduce.

  9. * nothing prepared her for the depression that came after.”

    Perhaps the organisation which performed the procedure ought to have done that before her final decision . . .

  10. I suppose making appalling decisions and then writing about them is a career. I can think of better ones. They don’t involve killing a child either.

    Although strictly speaking, you can have unprotected sex with a stranger and, thanks to the morning after pill, not have to kill a child a few months down the line. If you are going to be a slag, at least try not to be a stupid one.

    I wondered if she knows the name of anyone she’s fucked?

  11. person in Pictland

    “I had agreed to forego it”

    Akshully it’s “forgo”, dear, but clearly the Guardian doesn’t care.

  12. * nothing prepared her for the depression that came after.”
    Perhaps the organisation which performed the procedure ought to have done that before her final decision . . .

    They most likely did, since it’s a common Feature of natural miscarriages and abortions: acute postnatal depression due to hormones having to do an unplanned about-face.
    So classic it was even common knowledge to medieval midwives. With probable references *much* earlier, just for our little nook of Europe.

    The chance of mme. Campbell actually having listened to those warnings and heeding them is…. well… negligible.

  13. Didn’t Campbell start his career as a professional liar by writing “readers’ letters” for Forum magazine? Truly, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

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