I stopped taking the Pill because of social media – and then I got pregnant
'Congratulations!' said my manager, beaming, after I rushed to grab her in the corridor on my way into work and told her that I was pregnant. 'Not like that,' I said. Her face fell and she apologised. I had never been more embarrassed. But for a moment, it felt good to be seen as someone who was remotely ready to be a parent, instead of a person who had made an enormous mistake.
I was 22 and two months into my first grown-up graduate job, at a big marketing company in London. I'd moved there from home in Leeds, and not long after that I met my boyfriend, Simon*, on a dating app.
I'd been taking the Pill through the course of a previous relationship, but when that ended in 2021, I decided to stop. Reading online about the supposed side effects of the combined contraceptive I'd been taking had changed my mind about the little white Pill, which had been by my side throughout the whole of university.
I was inundated with the same stories about the Pill that every woman my age sees on social media: that it drives
Influencers I'd followed for years were suddenly plugging an app called Natural Cycles, marketed as a 98 per cent effective 'natural birth control' method that could predict a woman's chances of conceiving on a given day, using a temperature test. I never tried it myself, but when the ads came with lines like 'there are only five days in a month where a woman can get pregnant', the Pill started to look a bit old-fashioned – the sort of thing you'd take if you weren't up to speed on the latest science, and not really clued into 21st century feminism.
A number of my friends started to come off the Pill, citing the same side effects I'd been reading about. What we were all seeing online caused an attitude shift too. In the 1960s when the Pill first came along, it was seen as a ground-breaking technology that gave women so much more opportunity and freedom. But we were the generation who were put on it by doctors as teenagers, because of period cramps or spots. With all its hormones and side effects, depression and
I did feel better: after two weeks of nausea and turbo-charged anxiety, my brain felt sharper than it had in years, my mood lifted, and I lost half a stone in a month. I never stopped to question whether those changes might have been down to some sort of placebo effect, or wonder who profited from having influencers promote new
When I met Simon a year and a half later, it crossed my mind that I should go back on the Pill, but I was hesitant. I felt better without it, I thought, and like the nausea I felt in the come-off period, I knew that at least a fortnight of unpleasant side effects would await me when I started the Pill again too. I was determined to shine in my new job, and didn't want anything to throw me off.
Simon and I kept using condoms for the first few months that we saw each other, but then I started to rely on a period tracking app to determine when it was 'safe' for us to go without.
At that point, I considered getting the implant in my arm, or the IUD coil, but I was put off by having another set of hormones pumping through my system again, and by needing to take an afternoon off work. (If I could get an appointment at all, that was. Even after weeks of serious searching, I couldn't find a clinic in London where I could get a copper coil fitted quickly. There's now been a national shortage of hormone-free copper IUDs and a 10-week waiting list to get one for more than two years).
I'm sure it's not a shock to you that I ended up pregnant, but for me, it came as a total surprise. I'd never imagined that it would happen to me, despite the obvious risks I'd been taking with my health. The first couple of weeks of a pregnancy are much like the PMS symptoms I'd experienced in my time pill-free – cramping, nausea, bloating and fatigue – so at first, I tried to kid myself that everything was fine. But when my period was two weeks late (according to my tracker app) the potential that I was pregnant became impossible to ignore.
Simon and I stopped at a Tesco Metro on our way home from a night out to buy a pregnancy test, kebabs in hand. I tried to be nonchalant about it, going home to take the test alone. The little blue cross that appeared on the strip brought me straight back into reality. I was 22, pregnant, living in a houseshare, stressed out of my mind in my first proper job, and in a relationship that had been 'official' for a matter of days. Having an abortion was an easy decision, because I obviously was nowhere near ready to become a parent.
I was one of a huge number of young women caught in this position. Rates of abortion have climbed enormously in the last few years, reaching record highs in 2022 – that year there were 251,377 abortions in England and Wales, up 17 per cent on 2021. According to a
BMJ
When I found out I was pregnant, I realised that I could have been anywhere between four and eight weeks down the line, two shy of the legal time limit for having an at-home abortion by pill. If I wasn't quick, I might have to go to a clinic for a surgical abortion, a thought that horrified me.
I soon learnt that there were enormous waiting lists for the compulsory assessment with a nurse needed to get a hold of abortion pills. It was unprecedented, receptionists at abortion clinics said, that there was such huge demand, and I could well end up going over the 10-week mark.
Instead of having lunch with my new colleagues and networking, I spent every spare second ducking into meeting rooms and phone booths, frantically phoning clinics to see who could put me on their 'back-up list' for a call in case another woman cancelled. After a week, my phone rang. I took the call in the loo at a train station, with my finger jammed in my ear, as a sympathetic nurse read out a list of compulsory questions. Yes, I was sure. Yes, my boyfriend knew. No, we weren't using contraception. No, there was no way I could keep it, and no, I didn't want to come in for a scan. Three days later the pills arrived.
To women my age, the ability to have a safe and legal abortion is the cornerstone of women's rights. I'd been told all my life – and fully believed – that a foetus is just a bundle of cells, and that having an early-stage abortion is no different to having a heavy period. It's no wonder then that plenty of young women like me would rather risk pregnancy than take the Pill.
The physical and emotional reality of having an abortion could not have been more different to what I had expected. Having an abortion is extremely painful, even by Pill, and the whole experience was heart-rending. I never doubted that Simon would be there to support me, but I did believe that it would end our relationship, having such an awful thing smash-bomb our honeymoon phase. We're still together now, but we both still carry grief for the living thing we made together, too.
I understand now why women older than me hold the Pill as having been revolutionary for women's rights. Having access to hormonal contraception has changed everything for our sex: real control over when we get pregnant has opened wide our opportunities in the world. It's not just the 'not-having-a-baby' as I've learnt the hard way, not having an abortion is something worth being protected from too. While I had always been (and still am) pro-choice, I wish that this was something more women my age understood.
I'm on the Pill again now, and yes, I'm spottier and more fatigued. But after my abortion, I was deeply depressed, and it took more than a year of therapy to put me right. I don't think people should blame young women like me for wanting options that are better – we shouldn't have to choose between pregnancy and the very real side effects that come with the Pill. But I do think it's time we viewed this all more seriously. Take it from me: it's much less feminist to put influencers and an app in charge of your body than it is to use contraceptives.
*Names have been changed
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