I was working in the Lincolnshire Chronicle, based in Lincoln – I mention that because its owners, the then Lincolnshire Standard Group, had several papers in different towns and cities in Lincolnshire, including the Lincolnshire Standard which I think became the Boston Standard, the Louth Chronicle, the Sleaford Standard, the Skegness Standard, the Grantham Journal and the Horncastle News; I might be wrong on these, but none now exist.
I had got to know a young girl of 17 – was then 26 – and I got her pregnant. I can’t remember us ‘going out’ for long or even for more than one date. But I got her pregnant. I remember two things when she told me she was pregant: in more or less one and the same breath she said ‘I’m pregnant’ and ‘I’m going to have an abortion’.
The first thing I remembered was being immensely grateful that she had decided to have an abortion and that, crucially, brave old me would not be called upon to make a decision about anything either way.
Secondly, I became aware of a vague feeling that I wasn’t all that keen on abortion. In a sense I’m still not, but I shall say straight out that on the question of ‘pro-choice/pro-life’ I am firmly in the pro-choice camp. This had nothing to do with being brought up a Roman Catholic or anything of that kind for I had long been ‘lapsed’ (or as I see it no longer in thrall). It was just that I did not feel comfortable with the ending of life.
I’m familiar with the arguments pro and con, and frankly I can find fault with both lines of argument. But for me, at the end of the day, a woman has responsibility for and control over her body and thus it is and must always be her choice as to how to proceed.
Incidentally, I also believe that contraception should be available to all and rather dislike the idea a few women seem to have that they can ignore conventional methods of contraception because, hey, there’s always the get-out of having an abortion. However, here is not the place to debate it all.
At the time I was ‘going out with a girl’ from near Henley-on-Thames where I had grown up and where my parents lived. And her birthday was on August 29. The girl I got pregnant had arranged having the abortion herself.
It was to be in Leamington Spa where the British Pregnancy Advisory Service undertook them (I suppose rather giving the lie to being an ‘advisory service’). The operation was also to be on August 29.
Before she had made the arrangement, Annette and I had agreed that I should travel south from Lincoln to Henley to take her out for her birthday. The girl I had made pregnant – whose name I was once able to remember, but can no longer do so – was due to take a train to Leamington, have the pregnancy terminated, then take a train back to Lincoln.
She asked only one thing: would I meet her at Lincoln station when she came back. I said, no I wouldn’t.
I can’t remember whether or not I told here what my plans for that weekend were and being an unthinking, callous cunt I wouldn’t be surprised if I did. But it must have been awful for her.
And to this day every day since, on August 29, I remember my selfishness and callousness, and shudder.
NB That was in 1976. Ten years later I was working as a sub-editor on the South Wales Echo in Cardiff and doing a lot of photography. Relevant to what I write above is this picture of pro-choice protesters and pro-life arrivees at an anti-abortion meeting.
Also relevant is a remark made a few months ago on the radio when the US Republican-heavy Supreme Court made is updated ruling on Roe v Wade allowing states to decide for themselves whether abortion should be legal or not:
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