A Love Letter to Abortion Vlogs

Words: Laura O’Connor

In 2021, I had a medication abortion (a ‘pill abortion’). I had spent years volunteering at my local abortion advocacy groups, I had reported on reproductive justice, and I had been a support system for my loved ones who had had an abortion. And yet, when I had mine, it was as though the entire experience was alien to me. When I stepped into the clinic (inside of a hospital), my hands shook as I saw unfamiliar instruments, plastic gloves, and a handful of other women nervously sitting around the waiting room ahead of their consultations. After I had the abortion, I told no one. I wasn’t ashamed, but I worried that people – including my pro-choice friends – might think of abortion as being too grim or 'disturbing,’ visualising something it wasn’t. But by withholding those details, I realised that I trained myself to feel as though I had something to hide. 

My feed had already been featuring a lot of feminist and reproductive justice content because of my work and my passion for those issues, but as I searched more intently for abortion experiences, almost everything I found was either pro-life or cryptic still-frames of pregnancy tests with #grief or hints at regret. I can hold space for these experiences (and it doesn’t change my pro-choice opinions at all), but this wall of digital mourning only reinforced my nagging fear that what I had done was seen as something dark. 

Last month, however, I saw Nelly London's viral tour of the abortion clinic where she had her medication abortion. She makes clear that her video isn’t just of a random clinic - it’s where she, too, was prescribed mifegymiso and underwent the same experience that I, and over 250,000 people per year, have had. 

Scrolling through the comments, I saw hundreds of people talking about their similar abortion experiences, not with regret or sadness, but with insight to help others who are too scared to ask 'what it's like.' As I continued to scroll through abortion vlogs on TikTok, I watched Ali Weiss's short-form abortion vlog, where she speaks about having no shame or regret about her abortion. Within these comment sections were mini-forums of people who had had abortions and were going to have an abortion, exchanging their experiences, demystifying the process, and offering words of encouragement – not lamentation or pity – to those having an abortion. 

Watching these videos and seeing comment sections full of stigma-free and shame-free discussions, I felt a weight lifted off my chest. Abortion was being talked about for what it was: a medical procedure, one that most people will only ever be thankful for, with not even a hint of ‘modesty’ or secretiveness. As the pro-life movement grows, watching these videos showed me the other side - that the pro-choice movement is growing too, and people will not, and will never, stop needing abortions.

“The message was clear: anti-choice users seemed to recognise that abortion will never not happen, and so it could be okay so long as the woman clearly regretted it.”

In these previous videos I saw, where users were mourning a pregnancy or regretted an abortion, I saw these being considered ‘acceptable’ abortions: commenters would say things like ‘God forgives you 🙏🏻’ or ‘Don’t worry, you’ve repented 🕊.’ The message was clear: anti-choice users seemed to (implicitly) recognise that abortion will never not happen, and so it could be okay so long as the woman clearly regretted it or was visibly punishing herself. There was a ‘correct’ abortion experience, marked by regret and grief. But I didn’t have that experience – my only anxiety came from the opacity of the process, the reactions of others, and that I was perhaps wrong to *not* feel regret. 

My experience wasn’t mirrored in the purity culture-steeped vlogs, but in the new(er) wave of abortion vlogs that I discovered earlier this year, I finally saw myself in these videos. Four years later, I still mourn my abortion – but I mourn the years I spent holding my abortion experience as a secret or something that others wouldn’t want to hear about, even when I needed to speak about it. Seeing others speaking out, and comment sections being filled with positive and shame-free discussion, I feel a sense of liberation for my younger self and her deep-seated social anxieties around abortion.

I was raised in a religious, anti-choice family, and the anxieties I felt were a product of my early conditioning and the lack of accessible, empathetic conversations about what abortion was like. I was scared people would think abortion was something dark or disturbing because I had met - and grown up with - people who thought it was (even if I disagreed with them). 

Now, when I look at a list or a map of abortion bans across the world (including across the US), and I see growing waves of red, I can’t help but think of the opacity and manufactured shame that people will have to experience as abortion is forced to be an underground, illegal, or otherwise secret activity. The anti-choice rhetoric that I felt from my anti-choice community is now parroted in mainstream media and leadership. 

While I felt anxiety over the ‘hidden’ nature of my abortion, the pro-life movement wasn’t nearly as mainstream as it is now, and, frankly, I never could have predicted the wave of abortion bans that I see today. When I watch abortion vlogs and first-person abortion content now, I breathe a sigh of relief, but I also see the power this content holds to de-stigmatise one of the most common medical procedures on earth, and to amplify perspectives of joy and gratitude around safe and legal abortion.