Outage! Lily Allen can't remember how many abortions she had!

What that REALLY tells us about women - and abortion Plus: my top 5 shopping/ freebie successes of the week -and the TRULY EXCELLENT dupe on the one designer item you're all OBSESSED by this summer

“I want to say five? Four?” Lily Allen said last week, on Miss Me?, the podcast she co-hosts with Miquita Oliver. In the days since, it’s become sneery internet form to ask You The Reader to guess what she’s talking about, before offering some careless swanky Metropolitan Elite style prompts, like: cocktails. Loewe Puzzle bags. Yadda Ya.

But I do not embrace cliches, or sneering, so I won’t do that. I’ll just tell you. I mean, I already did, didn't I - in the headline. Allen ‘s talking about the number of abortions she’s had.

“I’ve had five too!” Miquita Oliver replied. “Lily, I'm so happy I can say that and you can say it and no one came to shoot us down, no judgment. We've had about the same amount of abortions."

Yet people did try and shoot them down. In the hours and days after the conversation was first broadcast, all manner of pundits, columnists and SubStackers came principally for Allen over Oliver; (presumably because she couldn’t quite put a number on it).

Jan Moir of The Mail called her a “dimwit braggart” and “casually callous”.

“I’m pro-choice, but…” many other responses began - where the ‘but’ was quickly followed by something along the lines of: “BUT this is too much! Too many! Too far! There need to be limits. Ever heard of condoms, girls? Or - keeping your legs shut?”

Etc.

Me?

“F**KING GOOD ON YOU GIRLS!” is probably how I’d best describe my first, second, third, fourteenth, twenty third, and indeed, on-going feeling. Not because of the quantity of unwanted pregnancies - it’s categorically not my place to judge, or celebrate, and be damned sure I do not - but because of the honesty.

Would you like to know why?

OK, so first, transparency. I’ve met both these women, and liked them both, very much. I interviewed Allen for Sunday Times Style a couple of years ago, found her sharp as a damn tack, unusual in her perspective, funny and abrasive in a way I can only respect. Miquita and I have crossed paths over the years, I’ve always had a lot of time for her. She, too, is razor sharp, funny as f**k - but she’s also, very warm, very sweet.

I think they’re an excellent double act. In a world full or women broadcasters shooting for non-threatening relatability, brandishing their wishy-washy non-opinions to maximise clout… Allen and Oliver say stuff. They are actually authentic. Their friendship is authentic. Their perspective is authentic, they don’t fall back on lazy, safe, tried-and-tested rhetoric which won’t scare the horses. They don’t hide how messy and chaotic their lives have been, at points - you know: like all our lives have been, at points, only women rarely cop to it, lest we be branded hot messes.

There’s just… truth to them. I think they are a force for good, I really do.

But now: onto what it really means when you forget how many abortions you’ve had (and why it freaks so many people - women, mainly - out).

It means it just wasn't a terribly big deal. It means, you accessed some routine healthcare when you needed it. It means you got on with your life so effortlessly afterwards… You kinda forgot.

And that. Is. Fine.

Oh - I know it’s not supposed to be! One of the biggest, clingiest narratives around abortion is It’s The Most Difficult Decision A Woman Will Ever Have To Make. It’s the thing we only do when we are so horribly trapped by our circumstances, we have no other recourse. Because OF COURSE WE’D KEEP ALL THE BABIES OTHERWISE - right? We’re women! Babies is what we’re made for! Growing them and birthing them and loving them and putting them first, beyond all else! Certainly beyond our bodies, careers, relationships and happiness! Women are selfless! Well, women should be selfless, anyway. Much easier to control that way.

But that narrative, it’s such a lie! Such a terrible lie! All the available stats on women and abortion show that a) LOADS of us have them, one in three or four in the UK, b) loads of us have more than one, and c) the vast majority of us feel really very little, if anything at all, in relation to them. According to a 2020 American report - the largest of its kind by far - 84% of women surveyed after a termination, felt positive emotions about it or… no emotions at all. Relief was the predominant positive emotional response. Only 6% of the women surveyed said they felt predominantly negative emotions as a consequence of an abortion. SIX PER CENT.

This, then, is the true story about abortion. Zero emotional response - or positive emotional response. But it’s a story that is rarely reported, because society is so terribly attached to the idea women are tortured by seeking one in the first instance, then haunted by it, by the guilt and the grief, eternally, afterwards. We LOVE that for women, for some reason!

(I guess that reason would be - punishment for having sex?)

But it is absurd! Wishing misery, guilt and shame on women, is absurd! Saying things like (and oh, I have read this many times in the aftermath to Five? Four?-gate) “I’m pro-choice - but there should be limits…” is absurd!

Because - what? What do you think those limits should be, exactly? Two abortions? Three - providing one of them is a result of rape, and/ or incest? One - and only then if you promise to be POLEAXED BY GUILT AND SHAME FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY?

And what exactly are we achieving, when we limit a woman’s access to abortion to… whatever arbitrary figure / circumstances it is we’re cooking up here?

Is it:

“When you’ve used up all your abortion allocation, you will be forced to continue with an unwanted pregnancy, have a child you do not want, can’t afford, and / or don’t have the emotional wherewithal to raise AS PUNISHMENT”?

How is that going to end well - for ANYONE? The mother, the child… Society as a whole? Must I raise that thesis, popularised in Freakonomics, which shows that the crime rate fell in the US 18 or so years after Roe V Wade was introduced, because women were no longer having to give birth to, and raise, children they did not want, couldn’t afford; children more likely, therefore, to become criminals? (It’s admittedly a controversial idea - but one which has never really been debunked. I guess we’ll have to watch US crime rates in 16 years or so, when the impact of the overturning of Roe might make itself known in them.)

I have come in for a little bit of this sort of flack - the Lily Allen sort of flack - in the past, myself. I’ve been very open about having three abortions (I had a bit of a Miquita Oliver moment with a friend on Primrose Hill last summer, when I referred to having had three. She said “OH GOD ME TOO! I’M SO RELIEVED I DON’T HAVE TO PRETEND IT WAS JUST ONE!”). And while I haven’t quite forgotten that it was three - I have been very open about how NOT devastating, traumatic and dramatic they were, for me. More: just wonderful in how extraordinarily relieved I felt.

But people don’t like to hear that. Nor, apparently, do they like to hear: “I’ve spent longer choosing sandwiches in Pret A Manger, than I did making the decision to terminate those pregnancies;” a line I’ve written more than once, one which inspired a reader to troll me on the internet, then me, to have a stand-up row with her, when I encountered her IRL in a cafe. BUT IT’S TRUE. When you know you don’t want to carry on with a pregnancy, choosing to have an abortion takes absolutely no time whatsoever! Trust me! There are, conversely, a lot of sandwiches in Pret - and sometimes, The One You Want Today is not at all obvious, certainly not instantly. I’ve also said “I’ve had shoes I’ve regretted more than my abortions.” Also true. (There were these incredible orange-cream coloured Miu Miu heels which I got on some kind of discount but which still cost a few hundred quid, in which, I simply could not walk. Now - that’s devastating.)

And look. I have said this before, but truly: I have absolute respect for people with genuine, profound misgivings around the morality of abortion. Just because I have none (misgiving, not abortions!), just because 84% of women demonstrably feel absolutely fine about terminating their pregnancies, that doesn’t mean I do not understand - even follow the logic - on the belief that abortion is wrong. I do. I just think this whole shebang (IE society) only works, when individual women are allowed to make their own minds up, about their own morality, their own bodies.

I have way less respect for the “I’m pro-choice BUT…” brigade, especially in response to declarations like Allen’s. Because that? That has nothing to do with a deeply, truthfully held belief - and everything to do with judging the way other women live their lives.

That translates as; “You can have an abortion - but only if it’s the right kind of abortion…”

“You can have an abortion - but you can’t be a sloppy slag.”

Babes. You either believe in a woman’s right to choose - whatever that entails, whoever she is and however she uses that right - or you don't.

And really - the sooner we accept that, for most women, most of the time, having an abortion is truly not The Most Difficult Decision She Will Ever Make, the better. Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver have taken us a step closer to that space, whether we like it or not.

Now. Would you like to hear about my most successful shopping and freebie incidences of the past week (all under £42)?

Also about this ridiculously good dupe of a designer thing I bought, at a third of the designer price, but which is at least as good as the original IF NOT BETTER?

Sure!