“When I Saw A Positive Pregnancy Test, I Wanted To Call An Abortion Clinic Immediately”

When Nelly London discovered she was pregnant, there was no moment of uncertainty and no difficult decision to make. Instead, she knew immediately that she didn’t want to be pregnant. Her focus turned to getting the care she needed as quickly as possible.

Here, she talks about certainty, relief, the realities of having a medical abortion, and why the experience was so different from the narratives as a millennial woman she’d grown up seeing in popular culture.

What It Feels Like To Get A Medical Abortion

As told to Mischa Smith

My period is literal clockwork. I was about 12 hours late, and I immediately thought, fuck. I just knew. I ran out, bought a test, took it, and it was positive. And I immediately thought, no. This is not something I want to see.

There was no joy in seeing that result. There wasn’t a question. There wasn’t a discussion I had to have with myself. I was almost physically rejecting it. Like, no, this is not correct.

The first person I told was my partner. He was actually the one who had suggested taking a test because it’s so unusual for me to be late. I went downstairs and told him, and I think I looked so upset and horrified that he was just like, “Right. What shall we do? How do we sort this, and what can I do to help?” Obviously, in reality, there’s little somebody else can do to help, but it was nice that he asked.

Within minutes, I found MSI and called them. I remember thinking beforehand, “How do I even start this conversation?” Then I remembered the line from Sex and the City where Miranda calls her doctor and says, “Hi, I’m pregnant, and I need not to be.” I’m pretty sure I stole Miranda’s exact line.

The woman on the phone was incredibly kind. She told me I’d called the right place, took a few details and arranged for a midwife to call me back. I remember feeling reassured almost immediately. She was just very calm and very clear. She told me not to worry, that I’d done the right thing by calling and explained what would happen next.

What surprised me was how completely consuming it became. I was looking at the next couple of weeks in my calendar and thinking, I can’t do any of this while I know I’m pregnant. None of it would actually have changed. They were meetings, dinners with friends, completely normal life things. But my brain couldn’t think about anything else. I’ve since learned that a lot of women experience that feeling.

Even though abortion is straightforward healthcare and waiting times in the UK are thankfully quite short, when you know you don’t want to be pregnant, it becomes all-consuming. You just want it resolved.

My entire process took about five days from finding out to having the abortion. Which is nothing. It was incredibly quick. But those five days felt so long. All I could think was: I want this to be over. I wasn’t really spending time thinking about fears. I was counting down the hours. The difficult questions actually came afterwards.

Once it was over, I could finally breathe again. And then I started wondering why my reaction had been so immediate. Why did pregnancy feel so catastrophic to me? Why was my experience so different from all those pregnancy announcement videos we see online? You know the ones where somebody sees a positive test and bursts into tears of happiness while their partner cries beside them.

When I saw a positive pregnancy test, I wanted to call an abortion clinic immediately. So then I found myself asking questions about what that meant. Did it mean I don’t want children right now? Did it mean I don’t want children ever? I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but those were the conversations I had afterwards.

One thing I do wish somebody had prepared me for was the pain. This is a difficult thing to talk about because abortion is so politicised, and I don’t want my experience to be used by people who are trying to take reproductive rights away from women. But for me, having a medical abortion was unbelievably painful. The closest description I can give is that I entered another universe of pain.

I know that isn’t everybody’s experience. Some women have cramps and carry on with their day, but it was mine. The second medication causes your uterus to contract; for me, those contractions were intense.

I blacked out for around 90 minutes. I remember opening my eyes when it was dark outside and feeling completely lost. I didn’t know where I was or what time it was. My partner told me that around two hours had passed.

What I find difficult is that women don’t always feel able to talk honestly about experiences like that. There’s this fear that if we talk about the pain, people will use it against us. But equally, women deserve to know what they might experience; it’s complicated.

The strange thing is that despite all of that, I never regretted my decision. Not for a second. I didn’t spend the process wondering whether I was doing the right thing. I knew I was. And I know that can sound shocking to some people because we’re often told that abortion should be accompanied by enormous guilt or regret, but that simply wasn’t my experience. And it isn’t the experience of a lot of women.

The morning after, I woke up feeling exhausted but relieved. Really relieved. I just felt grateful that I could move on with my life again. That I could go on with my week, my month, my plans. And that’s probably the thing I wish people understood better about abortion.

A lot of us grow up imagining that we’ll be judged, that we’ll be lectured, that we’ll walk into some awful clinic and be made to feel like we’ve done something wrong. That wasn’t my experience at all. I was treated with kindness, respect and understanding from beginning to end. Nobody asked me to justify myself, nobody demanded a reason, nobody tried to make me feel guilty. The people caring for me simply wanted to make sure I was OK.

And after everything I’d worried about, that was probably the biggest surprise of all.