Suzanne Moore Women will always have abortions: the question is whether they’ll die as a result

In the mid-1950s a young woman collapsed bleeding in the toilets at Liverpool Street station. She had, after several attempts to make herself miscarry, from taking quinine in the bath to throwing herself down the stairs, borrowed money. She travelled from Suffolk to London to lie on a dirty table where a stranger merely clipped her cervix and sent her off. And then the bleeding started. She became very ill.

That woman was my mum and she was always very strident about abortion rights. Once, to my teenage dismay, she detailed her experience to a load of suburban housewives at a Tupperware party. I was mortified but she grabbed me by the hand and off she strode.

Having been adopted herself, she had no time for the argument that all pregnant women could just carry babies to give away to others. Being “given away” affects your whole life.

I think of her and my own experience of abortion – I also feel no shame – when I read the convoluted arguments made by men, who will never find themselves in this situation.

Men do everything but confront the actual flesh and blood of women’s bodies. Isn’t it interesting how the US has a Supreme Court whereas we passed a law? Isn’t it all a question of faith and morality, with different states making their own federal laws? And isn’t this all really vaguely unpleasant?

To which I can only say, if you don’t want to have an abortion, don’t have one – and if you don’t have a uterus as far as I am concerned your opinion is as much use as a burst condom.

Bodily autonomy and reproductive rights are the bedrock of any feminism worth having. You can disagree with me all you like but the reality is that making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it happening, it just makes it more dangerous.

“Pro-life” is a slithery, deceptive term as in reality it means prodeath for some women. It means forced motherhood. It means the end of sexual freedom for women. Seeing as the Democrats knew that the Supreme Court was being packed with judges who wanted to overturn Roe v Wade, instead of talking about “gestational carriers” and “birthing people”, as they have done lately, it would be a damn sight more helpful if they spoke of women and mothers.

Yet again though, we see how different the US is. The majority in the UK support a woman’s right to choose. We are not governed by evangelicals in league with far-Right conservatives, so when it comes to maternity rights and abortion we are much more progressive than the US.

Actually, the 1967 Abortion Act was one of those pieces of legislation that is hard to imagine being made now. It was brought forward by David Steel, not because it was a vote winner but because it was ethically the right thing to do.

Women were dying at the hands of backstreet abortionists. MPs from Catholic constituencies were up in arms, but some later told me that although priests could not openly support them, they would give them the nod after hearing in confession about the awful truth of many women’s lives.

At a meeting I attended years ago to celebrate the 1967 Act, the late, great Claire Rayner spoke of her first job as an “underage nurse”. She had lied about her age to be accepted for training by saying she was 17. The first job Rayner had was laying out the body of a girl not much older than herself, who had died of a septic abortion.

Everyone at that meeting told their stories and it was immensely

If you don’t have a uterus your opinion is as much use as a burst condom

moving – just as it was to watch the Irish diaspora arrive back home with their wheelie bags to vote to “Repeal the 8th”.

This was taken as a sign of progress and modernity, yet abortion rights are threatened in many places, with extreme right-wing populist governments in Poland and Hungary. The life of a foetus, however undeveloped, even if unviable or the product of rape, is deemed worth more than that of a woman.

This will never fail to appal me: a conception of life which ignores the actual life of an adult female. What is sacred is surely that a child is wanted and it is up to each woman to make that decision. The control of women and our bodies is basic to all fundamentalism and, thankfully, we are not such a culture.

What worries me most, and I hope a new generation sees, is that women’s rights, once granted, can still be removed. Progress is never guaranteed, it has to be fought for over and over again. Just look at those pictures of mini-skirted women in Kabul in the 1970s if you need reminding of this.

No one can make me regret my abortion. It was a massive relief. The children I have are the children I was ready to have. It is my business and mine alone.

As we used to chant: “2-4-6-8, not the Church, not the state – women shall decide our fate.”