JUST OVER ONE month ago, @TwoWomenTravel grabbed the world’s attention with their plight. They set up a Twitter account and they tweeted the Taoiseach repeatedly during their trip to England. A trip they took to seek an abortion. And you know, when I read about it, I thought, ‘why the hell didn’t I think of that?’
You see, three months before them, back in May, I undertook the same journey. Except this isn’t the story of a woman flying in shame, in exile, to a foreign land. It’s the story from her boyfriend’s perspective, who travelled alongside her and watched – helplessly – as our life and our future together devolved into nothing because of the fact that when we returned, we had nobody to help us, no-one to turn to only each other.
We were both 22 and we were together for four years. She was the love of my life and I hers. My best friend, my confidant and my rock. And it all went to shit one Monday morning. I got the phone call first on the Sunday, saying her period never came. And on the Monday I got the text: “it’s positive what do I do?”
I was on the road to work at the time and you can be sure as hell the car nearly went over the ditch I got such a hop. I’m thinking: “I’m 22. She’s 22. I have a shitty summer job and a masters in September. She has a final year in college coming up. I’m in no position to have a child, to care for a child. We’re in college in separate parts of the country (Dublin/Cork). How the hell is that supposed to work?I’m just a kid, she’s just a kid, what the fuck are we going to do?”
The panic was surreal. You actually have no idea. You see, were she to disclose to her parents that she was pregnant, she would have been disowned. Out the door. “Your problem, deal with it” – it’s the kind of people they are. The shame of their daughter coming home pregnant, and she not even married – what would the neighbours think?! Then there’s me with a mother who’d beat me half to death if I were to tell her and a father who’d finish the job. So what do you do?
“I’ve found a place in Liverpool”
We met at a halfway point (she lives an hour away) in a cafe in Mitchelstown. Ordered tea for the nerves and got down to business. Now look, as panicked as I was, I was prepared to do whatever she wanted to do. It’s her body. It’s her choice. And I loved her. Whatever she was going to say in the next few moments I was going to stand by her. We sat and she said “I’ve found a place in Liverpool”.
The clinic she’d found was 10 minutes from John Lennon Airport in Liverpool. She’d rang them already and she’d talked to them about the appointment and found out the cost (they offer a discount for Irish couples). The closest appointment was on Friday week.
Over the next couple of days we both researched the procedure from the clinic’s site. To be quite honest, we both found it very difficult to find information on this side of the pond. Everything was more of a “don’t worry, just call us” and when you did, every reply was “all the information you’d need will be on their site”. So I guess that was that. We read the info, looked at the side effects (not many mind you, it all seemed pretty mild. There was some small print on severe stuff, but that was some mad chance one-in-a-million type of job). Whatever the odds, they weren’t emphasised as something that had to be considered with much thought.
The flights, accommodation and procedure set us back nearly €1300. That’s a lot for two broke students. But when you’re flying abroad, it comes with the territory.
The days before the appointment
I have never in my life seen a girl so shook, so nervous or so frightened. We talked every day. She cried, every day. The pain she was feeling, the morning sickness, the everything, she just could not bear it. She hated it. But she had to go about her days in front of her family and pretend nothing was wrong. Every night on the phone after work, I’d listen to her cry softly into her pillow, trying to talk to me but not so loud that someone could hear.
Soon enough the tears stopped and the resentment kicked in. It was my fault. I was the bollocks who did this. I was the person who put us in this position. What could I say to that? I couldn’t refute it, I was technically the person who made her pregnant. But what good was it shouting back that neither of us had anticipated a failure of contraception? She was the pregnant one, the one who was going through the physical pains of it. There was no point in fighting her. If it relieved some of the pressure from her to get it out of her system, I was quite happy with it. I understood I was the only person she could talk to. She didn’t trust her friends, the GP was a family friend and in all honesty, she didn’t need the judgement on top of her crippling anxiety (something she had suffered with for years and really ended up exacerbating the situation for her).
Flying out of Dublin Airport to Liverpool
The judgement was a big thing for her. The judgement from her family if they knew not only about the pregnancy but about our little trip too? How could she even look at them, she’d say. How could they even look at her, she’d say. What could I say to that only, “No love, they won’t judge you”. But I knew full well they would. I knew EVERYONE would. They fact we were flying out for an abortion? This filthy wretched thing? We would be the black sheep of our families. I knew it, she knew. And you know what else? Not only did we know it, but we felt it. No matter how hard you shook it off and told yourself that 12 Irish women a day travel to England for the very same thing, that feeling never lifted. I felt dirty and shameful. I can only imagine what she felt.
We flew out the day before, both sick to our stomachs at the thought of it. She was staying with friends, she’d told her parents. I was at the lads’, I told mine. But in reality we were both sitting in T1 of Dublin Airport staring at each other, petrified of what we were about to do. I’ve never felt helplessness like it. I had this girl, who depended on me for so much and whom I always had an answer for, staring at me expecting me to make it all better, make it go away, save her from it all. But there I was, looking directly back at her, with no answers to give and feeling exactly the same.
We checked into this disgusting guest house thing. Despite the exorbitant price and fab pictures online, it was a kip. We slept in a dusty, musty room. We got up the next morning and we trekked in the cold and rain to a miserable taxi rank and asked the driver to take us to the street address of the clinic, both of us too ashamed to say the actual building we were going to. Something tells me he knew though.
“I took one look at him and I knew he was Irish”
The next 12 hours were horrible. You arrive at this clinic and are put in a waiting room packed with people seeking the same as yourself. Now I’m not being mean here, but when you travel from Ireland and arrive here, weary and wrecked, and you’re put in a room with some of these people, it makes it all the more frightening. There were high people screaming their heads off; drunk people also screaming their heads off; couples fighting in one corner; a Vicki Pollard lookalike in the other roaring down the phone at someone called Tiffany saying she’ll have her “cut” the second she’s “got this thing out” of her – and then there was us. Sitting there like rabbits in headlights, not knowing where to look or what to do.
We were eventually called and brought to this medieval looking consultation room where the nurse ordered me to sit in the corner while she pulled a screen across, separating herself from me. She took the details and then sent us to a second waiting room. Here we waited for six hours straight. About three hours in, the high people came in absolutely ossified. Screaming and shouting and disturbing everyone who was either waiting for the procedure or had taken a tablet orally and were in the throes of trying not to get sick until they could take the second one. It was just a horrific experience. Four hours into waiting, a quiet man and woman in their late 40s came in and sat in the corner. I just took one look at him and I knew he was Irish. Farmer’s hands, the sit of him in the chair and the fact that they mumbled quietly to each other as if they were in mass. If anything it was good to know we weren’t on our own. I nodded at him and he nodded at me.
Eventually she was called to go up and I was told to go down the town; it would take 3 hours. So I did. I went and got food; it was now 5pm and I was fit to keel over with the hunger. The long and the short of it was she walked out when it was over and was dying with the hunger. She got food, the pains were gone and she felt tired but otherwise good. We walked on in the rain and got a taxi and went back to our kip of a place. And we flew home thinking that that was it. It was over. Job done. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
Things started to go wrong
Things started to go pear-shaped some time after getting back. Her emotions were going everywhere, she had these pains that were crippling her, this bleeding that would come in floods and these anxiety attacks and mood swings that would genuinely frighten you. All I could say was to tell her that she needed to see a doctor, despite the fact she’d already written that off. She eventually agreed to travel down to Cork to a random GP she knew of from college. She told him her story and he literally said, “Ah yeah, that’s the side effects”. And that was it. No advice, no help, no meds, nothing. So where do you go now? What do you do? Surely there’s abortion aftercare services here readily available to help you? Ha. Good one.
We rang some prominent names that popped up in Google – clinics and the like that offer aftercare over here. Might as well have been ringing turnips. Of the numbers called, all but one told us we should ring the clinic in Liverpool for advice and that they couldn’t offer much more other than to recommend to see a GP. Some offered counselling services but again, that wasn’t really the answer. She wanted to know: 1) how long was this was going to last; 2) was her body damaged; 3) could she get some help in the form of medication. I mean, she was literally stranded. Bear in mind I was the only person who knew and the mood swings and anxiety attacks were affecting her around her friends and family. And me. We would fight over nothing, but by God would we fight. (The fighting eventually took its toll on us and we mutually separated. Notwithstanding that, we remained in constant contact and were available to talk to each other 24/7. I mean, she was all I had to talk to and vice versa).
Eventually she found a GP who could explain things a bit better. These mood swings were down to the hormones in her body being thrown out of whack because of the abortion. The anxiety was just playing off of it and the pains and bleeding were part and parcel (although no one told us). As for an answer as to when it would all subside? Not a clue.
It’s a disgusting feeling, the feeling of exile
I guess what I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to take you through the motions of it from a young person’s view. The fact we had to buy a plane ticket to England for something that we should have been able to get here. The fact that we’re both carrying this horrific secret that only we know about. The fact that we couldn’t tell our friends or the fact we couldn’t tell our parents. I’ve never felt a weight so heavy in my life.
I believe every woman should have the autonomy over any decision relating to her body, the right to bodily integrity. But in Ireland you don’t. Women don’t have that right. And it’s almost a societal implication that just because they can’t receive that same treatment over on these shores, they can’t talk about it – and neither can we, the men. As a result, you get this feeling of shame every time you think about it. The little voice in your head that says “Yeah, you travelled to Liverpool to get an ABORTION. You awful person.”
It ruins your mental health and it puts pressure on your shoulders that you couldn’t even imagine. You think it’ll be ok, that you’ll find help anyway when you’re back here. But you don’t. You don’t find the help. You’re sitting there, alone and dependant on each other. Because over here, we don’t talk about things like that. We don’t think about things like that. And if you’re ever in a position to hear of someone who’s gone through it, you shame them and you judge them for what they’ve done. Because if you have to travel to receive what is an illegal procedure over here, sher you might as well be a criminal. It’s a disgusting feeling, the feeling of exile.
The author of this piece has requested to remain anonymous
This article was originally published on 25 September 2016
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