Comedian Grace Campbell was a guest this week on Oliver Callan’s morning show on RTÉ radio. The issue of abortion came up after Callan raised the piece she wrote in the Guardian in June about her recent abortion and the grief and sadness she felt afterwards.
Campbell spoke about how after her abortion she was really depressed and had a “permeating sense of grief.” Referencing the lack of post abortion supports, she mentioned one of her best friends who also had an abortion recently and had a “really similar reaction afterwards.”
Campbell who is 29 and the daughter of journalist and political advisor Alastair Campbell said she was never informed by the doctor performing the abortion what she should expect afterwards or the difficulties she would have coming to terms with what happened. She speculated the reason for this was that doctors don’t want to appear as though they’re putting women off the decision to abort their child.
In her piece in the Guardian about the loss of her baby, she referred to “a grief for something I never knew, but something I know I would have loved very much”, and added that every time the image of what happened flashed into her head “I’d burst into tears like a child who’d tripped and wanted their mum.”
At the end of the interview on RTÉ, Oliver Callan urged anyone impacted by the discussion or experiencing an unplanned pregnancy to contact the Government run My Options hotline – the same hotline that has been repeatedly shown to fast-track women down the road of abortion and that is not equipped or designed to provide social or practical support to women who are conflicted about whether to have an abortion or continue their pregnancy.
The root of the problem arises from the very deliberate political move by the Government to grant all decision making power in the area of unplanned pregnancy to the most extreme elements of the pro-abortion movement. Until this issue is properly highlighted and addressed nothing is going to change and all roads will continue to lead to abortion regardless of how many women are forced to suffer in silence after their abortions.
Below is her full interview.
