In 1972, when I realised I was pregnant, I panicked. I tried home remedies, then I was told about a GP in Ponsonby who would refer you to a psychiatrist in Remuera, who would write a letter confirming the need for a therapeutic abortion on mental health grounds, and refer you to a consultant gynaecologist with rooms in Queen Street, who would book you into a private hospital where you would pay the hospital and the anaesthetist, and have the termination.
The consultant examined me and said I was more than 12 weeks pregnant; I was adamant that I wasn't. He said I was and as such I would have to have a hysterotomy abortion.
He did not tell me what that was; that it is major abdominal surgery, the riskiest of abortion procedures and normally would be reserved for rare situations where less invasive procedures were not possible or appropriate. He never explained recovery times, implications for future pregnancies, or the medical risks.
I was so frightened and overwhelmed I didn't ask any questions. I went into the hospital on a Thursday evening and I told my boss I'd be back at work Monday. The first I knew that a hysterotomy abortion was major abdominal surgery was when a nurse asked if I wanted to shave my pubic hair or should she do it. I asked why I needed to be shaved and she said they made a horizontal incision below the pubic hairline so it wouldn’t be visible. I wanted to get up and leave but I was just too overwhelmed.
I woke up after the operation with what I now know is my usual reaction to general anaethesia, low blood pressure and intense nausea. Retching was incredibly painful.
Later that morning, the doctors came in, stood at the end of the beds of the three young women who were in for same procedure - and the surgeon asked which one had the cyst?
It was me. He did not explain what type of cyst, just that it was very large and that he'd removed it and sent it off for a biopsy, but he was ‘pretty sure it wasn't malignant’.
I thought he meant they’d removed the cyst. I never knew if the entire ovary had been removed until I went in for a tubal ligation in the UK many years later. I was never informed of the results of the biopsy.
I got an infection and I was still in severe pain and bleeding heavily so they wanted me to stay in the hospital longer than the other two women, but I couldn't afford it so they sent me home in a taxi with a bottle of penicillin tablets.
I was still in a lot of pain when the consultant removed the stitches, told me I should have an IUD and that fitting it after an abortion was the best time. It was so painful I almost threw up.
I bled constantly afterwards. Some months later I was going to Australia so, when I went home to Christchurch to see my family, I went to a gynaecologist to have the IUD checked.
He was an older man whose manner indicated both contempt and a degree of hostility. I thought about leaving; I should have followed my gut instinct. He examined me and said the IUD had fallen out and he would insert a new one there and then.
If I thought the first one was painful, that one floored me. I think I was in shock as I couldn’t stand up, or stop shaking and crying. They carried me to a room, left me there for half an hour and then called a taxi and sent me home, doubled over in pain and sobbing uncontrollably.
When my mother found out who I'd gone to she was furious; he was the same man who years earlier had refused to refer her for a hysterectomy. She had five kids, a sick husband and was in constant pain from massive fibroids. He told her she should learn to live with it as it was not a life threatening condition.
In Melbourne I kept bleeding and then I developed a heavy, smelly discharge. I went to a hospital and when I told them my history, at first they were sceptical until they saw the scar. When they removed the IUD under light anaethesia, they could not believe that a gynaecologist had fitted that type, mid-cycle, without anaesthesia or pain relief.
I was sent home with antibiotics and advised to avoid IUDs and to find a pill that suited me. I never could and I had to use alternative methods until I decided I did not want children and had what I found was my remaining tube, tied.
I continued to suffer on-going pelvic pain for which I had various investigative procedures including an endoscopy, until I was referred for a D&C in the Whittington Hospital in London and doctors found a metal object that was embedded deeply in the lining of my womb.
I asked if it could have been the IUD that had been thought to have fallen out – but the surgeon said it was unlike any IUD she had ever seen. I asked if I could see it but they had thrown it away with the endometrial material they’d removed. That was a shame as I’d have liked to have seen what had been inserted into or left in my womb all those years earlier. It’s entirely possible, given the unidentified metal object and the infections, that I would have struggled to get pregnant had I decided to have kids.
I write about this now only because it's a reminder of how dreadful things used to be here in NZ; how dreadful they are for many women elsewhere in the world, and how dreadful they are about to become for many more women in parts of the USA.
I don’t take abortion lightly. It’s not something anyone should take lightly if only because, like any medical procedure, it involves risk. It’s the responsibility of everyone involved to minimise that risk by maximising the conditions in which there is fully informed consent, and in which girls and women have meaningful choices and real control over their fertility. That means such things as easily accessed, safe contraception; sex education that is aimed at empowering girls and sensitising boys; and timely, supportive, easily accessed, low risk, abortion services.
