Artist was humiliated by the authorities and lambasted by the press after terminating a pregnancy, but refuses to be silenced

Artist was humiliated by the authorities and lambasted by the press after terminating a pregnancy, but refuses to be silenced

From the article:

One night, two weeks after I’d taken the pills, I was at home when suddenly there was a loud banging on my front door and shouts of “police!”.

I had just come off the phone with my psychologist. It had been a stressful time and that night I’d had a panic attack. I’ve had these many times before and I called my psychologist for help. She asked me about any new medication I’d been taking so I told her about the abortion pills.

She was calm and told me that she was calling a paramedic. Instead she called the police. Later, the recording of her conversation with the police was leaked to the press, where she can be heard telling them that I’d had an abortion and was suicidal, though I specifically told her I wasn’t.

I have a lot to say about my psychologist, none of it fit for print, but suffice to say I trusted her completely and she violated that trust and our confidentiality.

  • bane_killgrind@kbin.social
    73·
    11 months ago

    They took me to the emergency department at the hospital. While I sat in a corner crying, the doctors there told the police that they could look after me and that they could leave.
    This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. They took me to another hospital with a gynaecological department, where more police were waiting for me. All this time they never said a word about what I was supposed to have done wrong.
    The doctors at the second hospital seemed intimidated by the police. They were told to take my blood and give me a vaginal exam. My consent didn’t seem to matter. The doctor who was examining me let me know he didn’t want to get involved. “I do not care about any of this,” he told me.
    After the examination, the police got more aggressive. Female officers took me to a gynaecologist’s office and the doctor left me. They told me to strip naked but I refused to take off my knickers. They made me squat and cough in front of them. Why would they do this but to frighten and humiliate me?
    They threatened me with a cavity search. With my back to the wall, crying and naked except for my knickers, I felt like a hunted animal. I screamed at them, “What do you even want from me?”