A woman who had a DIY home abortion has spoken out about her graphic and painful ordeal. Sophie, who took both abortion drugs at home during the Coronavirus pandemic, said: “I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did.”

DIY home abortion regulations were implemented by the UK Government in response to the Coronavirus lockdown. It involves women being left to obtain chemical abortion drugs via a video call and then having to perform their own abortions at home with no medical supervision or support. Women will not be required to meet a doctor in person, and the abortion drugs will be delivered through the post.

As some pro-abortion campaigners are calling for the regime to be made permanent, Sophie has spoken out describing her devastating ordeal and how DIY abortion has hurt women like her up and down the country.

“There were big chunks coming out of me”

Sophie said: “There are 100% other women out there like me. And it worries me that we’ve opened up this floodgate now with DIY abortion. It was scary enough for me, I can’t imagine what it might be like for a teenage girl who might have to go through this, how scary and isolating that might be for her.

“There were big chunks coming out of me. I would break down sobbing in the shower because chunks were coming out of me – it was absolutely horrifying. I know that this isn’t everyone’s experience, but I think most people can agree that it isn’t a nice sight to see coming out of you. Imagine what it would be like for a woman that was further along than me – a fetus doubles in size every week.”

“I was never given a full choice.”

Sophie went on to describe how she was not informed of all the information surrounding her DIY abortion procedure. This meant she was not able to make an informed choice about her abortion.

She said: “From my experience, we’re not giving women a choice. Choice is when you give a woman all the facts, you treat her like an intelligent human being and respect her, so that she can make an informed decision.

“But I was never really given full choice. Certain information was never disclosed to me – I’ve had to look it up later. And when I asked why they never told me, they said, ‘it would be cruel to a woman to tell her, it’s already a very difficult choice, it would be cruel to go into detail’. But that means you’re only given half the facts.

“Do we really think that’s acceptable? Keeping women in the dark in order to make their decision ‘easier’? That’s not a choice then, is it?

“Even if people don’t see this as an ethical issue, it’s still not telling the whole truth. There was no discussion of all the facts for me. There is information that’s missing, and contradictory information, and it makes it disrespectful to women who find themselves in that position of having to decide. But people in that position need to be given proper information so they’re not given a life of regret.”

“Left to grieve alone during lockdown”

SPUC has been reporting on the lonely and tragic reality faced by women undergoing a DIY home abortion. One woman said that having a DIY abortion during lockdown gave her time to “torture herself with thoughts of a baby that will never exist".

Sophie also described the isolation she faced during her own DIY home abortion.

She said: “I was very alone during lockdown, I was crying every single day for hours – even before I’d gone through with taking the pills. It was extreme sadness, I was almost grieving what I was about to do. But there were no checks done, no psychological examination – there just isn’t for abortion because it’s seen as a barrier, as making it too difficult for women.

“I don’t think anybody in the world would think it was acceptable in our healthcare system to say to women when they were miscarrying at home, ‘stay at home, go through this alone, you’re not going to have any medical checks, you can’t go to A&E to get checked, we’re not going to follow up…’ We know that’s not acceptable. And I’m horrified, I cannot understand how that can be possible for an abortion. I’m shocked that we’re giving women pills without any checks, forcing them to have a miscarriage on their own. Because that’s exactly what an abortion is – a forced miscarriage.”

Abortion providers need to be called out

Sophie continued: “The bottom line is that it’s their duty of care to do no harm. But this has caused me physical and emotional harm. If nothing else, I hope that this will make the people at the top really think about what it is they’re doing.

“Institutions like Marie Stopes and BPAS need to be called out, they need to be checked. The situation we’re now in is archaic – we’re going back to the times of hidden abortions. And I want to stress that these services we’re offering women are not good enough.

“Women in this situation need to be looked after. There are consequences to these decisions that you live with for the rest of your life.”

How you can help

It is crucial that this harmful regime is not made permanent.

The Government’s consultation on whether DIY home abortions should be made permanent in England will close on 26 February and the consultation in Wales ends on 23 February.

SPUC is asking all pro-life people in England and Wales to make their voices heard and respond to this consultation.

You can find SPUC’s briefing on how to respond to the consultation in England here and the consultation in Wales here.