A woman named Kirsty became pregnant during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and shared her abortion pill regret with March for Life UK, saying that she felt “horrible” as soon as she began taking the multi-pill regimen. “[As] soon as I took the first pill, I didn’t want to,” she said. She had initially been happy to be pregnant, but the baby’s father was not. He used threats to convince her to abort.
Kirsty was unable to have a face-to-face consultation with a medical professional regarding abortion — something that has become standard in both the UK and the U.S. since the pandemic. “It was a very brief [telephone] conversation,” she said. “More of a case of where they were going to send the medication.”
She says no one informed her of the risks associated with the abortion and no one offered an ultrasound to date the pregnancy. Kirsty had taken the abortion pill years prior and had ended up in the hospital as a result. She didn’t want that to happen again.
The abortion pill is approved for up to 10 weeks in the UK. With each passing gestational week, the abortion pill’s efficacy rate decreases, increasing the failure rate. This means more women will be advised to get a follow-up surgical abortion. Kirsty asked to come to the abortion facility to be examined, but she was refused. She was already over the 10-week limit, but she hesitated to take the pills once they arrived.
“I did look at the box for a couple of days thinking I couldn’t do this,” she said, “but I couldn’t speak to anybody. There was nobody I could phone.”
She took the drugs a couple of days after receiving them. She fell asleep experiencing bad cramps, but when she woke up she felt nothing and wondered if the pills had even worked.
“I remember lifting up my blanket and it being like a scene out of a horror movie,” she said. “And I just remember getting up, and as I got up I could feel a drip of blood coming down my legs. And then I looked down and I’d made a mess on the carpet. And to this day, I’ve still got a stain on the carpet, which is all I’ve got left of my baby now.”
Kirsty went to the shower and washed the blood off. Two weeks later, she took a pregnancy test as instructed by the abortionist, and it revealed she was still pregnant. A second test a week later was also positive. The abortionist told her to come in, and it was discovered that she had a fever — but she was sent home and told to return in a week. She hoped she was still pregnant, but an ultrasound a week later revealed that the abortion had been successful — which Kirsty regrets.
“Not just because of the heartache but because it’s dawned on me it was a dangerous procedure. I was left bleeding really heavily for months. To the extent I couldn’t even take a walk without the risk of making a mess of myself,” she explained.
“The at-home abortion is being made to think that you’re doing it in the comfort of your own home without, ya know, having to travel to a clinic or a hospital,” she said. “But then, you’ve got the memory of the loss of your child in your own home forever. So now, to me, my home is not my home, my happy safe place. It’s the place where I took away my child. If I could go back, my decision would be completely different. And I would never want — I would never want my worst enemy to feel the way I’m feeling now because it’s the worst feeling in the world.”
The full video of Kirsty’s story is available here.
