In 2021, I thought a lot about the lack of control women have over their bodies

Published on 22 December 2021

I ushered in 2021 on my couch, drinking champagne, feasting on Bridgerton’s Duke of Hastings, and sobbing helplessly.

It wasn’t quite the way I’d hoped my new year’s eve would go. 

I’d been crying a lot around that time. Violently. Chest heaving, snot clogging up my nose. I’d finally let myself think about the child I did not have many years ago.

I was 27.

I was pregnant.

I was helpless.

At the time, I’d robotically packaged my emotions away into a box and shoved it to the back of my mind. In 2020, the box burst and my entire being was overwhelmed. In 2021, I’ve let myself begin to sort through those emotions and start to process what happened.

When I fell pregnant, I really had the odds stacked against me. 

I wasn’t allowed to be pregnant. I lived in a country where being unmarried and giving birth was illegal, yet abortions were illegal too. Despite being a ‘modern’ society in many respects, being married is the only way a woman could give birth in a hospital here. If she is not married, the consequences can be grim: she potentially faces time in jail and eventually may be forced to leave the country. Although my relationship was serious and long-standing and had evolved over years, I was – in the eyes of the law – very much single. Yet the threat of the same punishment hangs over women who seek abortions. My state was not recognised.

And then there was my familial culture. Having a child outside the bounds of marriage is frowned upon and not accepted by many. The fear of ‘bringing shame to the family’ loomed over my head like the sword of Damocles. I couldn’t turn to them for help, for advice, or for comfort because I believed that I would get the opposite. Either that or they would help me out of fear and panic but would berate me for the rest of my life. 

Perhaps as a result of these things, my boyfriend did not even consider a life with a child. 

“I haven’t had my period,” I said to him, fearfully.

I was wont to flights of paranoia, but then that sickly feeling and pressure around my back and stomach arrived, signaling there was nothing to worry about. This time, he’d dismissed it as my usual worry. A week after my period was due, I was brought down by a piercing pain in my uterus. It filled me with an incomparable fear. I took the test.

“It’s positive,” I said as I emerged from the bathroom and watched his face do absolutely nothing.

“OK, we’re going to fix this,” he said, grimly.

“So we’re not having the baby?” I asked tentatively. I hadn’t even had time to process what those blue lines on a stick really meant.

“Well of course, we’re not,” he said impatiently, brushing the statement aside like it was nothing.

This year, as I’ve started to unpack what happened, I’ve realised that I had no control over the situation. The path from ‘pregnant and unmarried’ was inescapable. There were no crossroads, no slow lanes, no U-turns. I was much like the hapless citizens of Bridgerton who were simply expected to parade and then marry, like clockwork, no questions. 

No one asked me what I wanted, or how I felt. It didn’t even cross their minds to ask because no possible future existed in which I had the baby. 

A month after that, unbeknownst to many, I took a flight and made my way to a hospital in an unfamiliar city where both me and my family name were unknown. I had booked an appointment for a surgical abortion. While it was not illegal to have the procedure there, those who have them are considered to be promiscuous women (of course, the same label is not given to the male partner). I had my fair share of doctors and nurses asking me if I could ‘just get married’, or why I even had to have sex before I got married. 

I refused to look at the monitor the day before the appointment when they carried out my ultrasound. I feared I would see a blip and change my mind. 

“Don’t you want to look?” asked the unknowing technician after noticing I was looking everywhere else but at the screen. 

“No,” I said. “I’m having an abortion.” 

He shut up after that.

Two days later, I was back home and threw myself into life. Parties. Work. Exercise. As if nothing had happened. As if I wasn’t bleeding violently for more than 2 days after the procedure. As if I hadn’t had a say in what had happened.

I carried this stuff with me silently until last year. Since then, therapy has helped. I talked a lot. I cried a lot. I still cry sometimes. Sometimes the tears are for myself, sometimes they’re for my child who would have been 6 this year, sometimes they are for anyone else who has had to go through this alone.

The news is still awash with stories of women around the world who have little to no control over what happens to their bodies. Their flesh is governed by powerful and privileged men who cannot possibly understand what it is like not to have complete control.

I’ve thought a lot about those in Ireland who are pregnant but do not want to be but abortions are illegal after 12 weeks. I have watched in breathless horror for those in Texas where the state polices women’s bodies to the point of rewarding those who snitch on anyone involved in abortions. It is akin to The Handmaid’s Tale where women just don’t have the right to choose.

I know what that means. I know how it feels.

Not having jurisdiction over your own body is hard to explain. I can move my limbs when my brain sends signals to the right body parts. I can flex my muscles. I can feel the pliancy of my flesh under the pressure of my fingers. But I didn’t and still would not have agency over what is mine.

How can this still be the case in 2021?