[Mary Kenny is an experienced journalist, author and broadcaster working in England and Ireland. She has written for over 30 newspapers and magazines over the course of her career, and was for many years the Human Life Review’s European editor. She was the Human Life Foundation’s Great Defender of Life in 2006. The following was published on July 24, 2025 in The Tablet and is reprinted with the author’s permission.]

In the early 1980s, over 500 letters from women (and some men) on the subject of abortion came into my possession. A 35-year-old woman, Lynn, wrote a personal article in the Daily Mail asking “should I have an abortion?” She was unsure, and her boyfriend was reluctant to be a father. Most letters in response urged Lynn to have the baby and very many also wrote about their own feelings and attitudes. One of the consistent themes was the way men can react to an unexpected pregnancy; other pressures too were often brought to bear.

“My husband never wanted children and refused to discuss the matter although our relationship was of eleven years’ standing,” wrote a woman from Lancashire. “So you can imagine his reaction when I discovered I was pregnant. Quite honestly, it was hellish and in fact he didn’t speak to me for the first three months of pregnancy. However, since our child was born, my husband is a changed man. He is totally besotted with our son . . . yet he wants no more children and throws up the same old arguments against.” “Even at seven months [pregnancy] my boyfriend was still screaming at me to go to a clinic in Roehampton, in west London. “They’ll still do it for you there if you plead insanity,” wrote Anon. “But I have my lovely baby boy now”, although her boyfriend “has neither spoken to me nor seen me since.”

A woman from Staplehurst in Kent wrote that “enormous pressure was put on me” to have an abortion by her boyfriend and a family friend. She resisted and wrote of “the great relief I experienced when it was too late to have an abortion.” There was a complex family situation involving a parent’s death and a dispute over family property. She felt very alone and “my unborn child was all I had.”

An older woman from North Yorkshire wrote of her unmarried daughter’s pregnancy. “Neither my daughter nor I wanted the abortion but went along with it for the sake of my husband, who was quite convinced it was the right thing to do. I bitterly regret allowing it to happen—the heartache and trauma of that time remains with me . . . No man is worth the sacrifice of a child.”

The urging of some husbands and boyfriends to choose abortion might be considered “coercive” or “controlling” today. A woman from Ramsgate in Kent said her husband “insisted” on an abortion, threatening to leave her. She complied with his wishes, but he left her anyway. Many correspondents underlined that husbands and boyfriends could be “horrified” at the announcement of a pregnancy, particularly if contraception had been used. A single mother from Kent wrote that her husband couldn’t accept that her affection might be focused away from him. A woman from Rochdale in Lancashire wrote that “most men feel threatened by an unseen baby.” A man writing from Twickenham, in Greater London, wrote that he “found the idea of a small child repulsive” and loathed his wife cooing over babies. A woman from Lincolnshire wrote that her husband “brooded and sulked” when a pregnancy occurred and finally she had an abortion to appease him and save the marriage; but she cried “tears by the ocean” because “I grew to love the child I was carrying.”

“Many men, my dear husband included,” wrote a woman from Surrey, “feel fairly detached about babies. Some think babies are dreadful. But then when that tiny tot starts walking and talking dads usually feel oddly drawn by him/her.” A woman from Bristol wrote that “men can be difficult and demanding, especially if they are an only child, and baby takes away the love due to them.” Several instances were cited where the man became attached to the child once born and developing.

Men also expressed their grief at an abortion (which they’d reluctantly paid for, in one case by installments). A man from Plaistow, East London wrote “Abortion broke me up or broke my heart.” A man confessed he was “responsible for two abortions”, but when his partner “came back from the procedure producing milk” he had “this awful feeling that it was my baby’s milk and I felt sorry for the dead baby.”

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“Choice” and “autonomy” are concepts often applied to abortion but it’s striking, in real experience, how much context matters when choices are made. A theme that also emerged was the impact on a marriage or a relationship that a pregnancy can have. The Lincolnshire woman who went through with an abortion although she herself had come to love her unborn child, did so for the sake of her marriage. As a Christian she felt she could “never be forgiven” and stayed away from church for two years, yet in the end she felt she had “made the right decision” to keep the family together.

Motherhood, reflected a correspondent from Norfolk, “can break up a marriage.” The notion that marriage itself, once embedded in all Christian values, was itself a natural condition for procreation had become weaker. (Princess Anne once briskly called motherhood “a professional hazard of being a wife.”) That each pregnancy was a choice was now the norm. “Don’t lose your boyfriend,” wrote a woman from Malvern, “have the abortion.”

The role of family and friends in considering personal choice could be crucial. A young woman in Chatham, Kent lost her fiancé to a drowning tragedy, while finding she was pregnant. “Everyone” advised her to have an abortion, and start afresh. But she was supported by her family, and some good friends and continued the pregnancy: she subsequently married, was successful in her work and had two more children.

A woman from Newport Pagnall, Buckinghamshire, who “bitterly regrets an abortion” wrote that “’choice is often something more limited in reality than it seems in the abstract . . . Freedom of choice, in the abstract, is presuming a limitless range of possibilities: many women simple ‘choose’ abortion because it is a practical solution—and practical it certainly is. But if their choice were limitless . . . perhaps it would be different.”

Attitudes to marriage and single motherhood were changing during the 1980s, and many correspondents underlined the fading of stigma attached to being an unwed mother. Nevertheless, some correspondents said that a child needs two committed parents, and if that is lacking, abortion may be preferable. The hardship in bringing up a child alone was also noted. One woman from London S.E.19 suggested that children of single parents would have no model for marriage.

Family planning and contraception had also changed attitudes. Women who became pregnant on the mini-Pill expressed anger and resentment: their expectations were that “taking precautions” would protect them from an unexpected pregnancy. Yet there was a strong, perhaps almost instinctive “pro-baby” majority. Many of the letters started with the phrase “I am not anti-abortion—but . . .” while urging the 35-year-old Lynn to take her chance of motherhood now. “It’s such a final decision,” wrote a woman from Margate on the Kent coast. “Life can be taken but never given back.” The ambivalence that can accompany the subject was often expressed. One woman, writing from Paddington in London, recalled having an illegal “back-street” abortion “to save my family from shame” and nearly died in the process, nevertheless wrote “please think of it as a life”. Some correspondents could refer to an earlier abortion as a practical measure that was justified, and yet, at the same time, mourn for an aborted child. “I am now remarried with two lovely girls,” wrote a woman from Port Talbot, Wales “but I have never forgotten my unwanted child and feel the burden of guilt every day of my life.”

I had also solicited other correspondence through advertising (in the Daily Telegraph, the alternative magazine Private Eye and in Nursing Mirror) and sent out questionnaires to doctors and nurses. There was general support among medics for respecting a patient’s choice, but also a strong emphasis urging better contraceptive services—except from one doctor, who suggested that contraception actually in-creased demand for abortion. (Incidentally, all doctors accepted a cut-off point for legal abortion, variously suggesting 12, 14, 18, and 20 weeks—one at 24.)

A radical obstetrician who campaigned for free abortion, the late Professor Peter Huntingford, told me that abortion had one great benefit over contraception: it allowed a woman to decide whether she wanted a pregnancy after she became pregnant, rather than before. “Accidental” pregnancy also allowed a woman to test for fertility, he said. As abortion has risen very markedly in the last four decades (162,454 in 1981 for England and Wales: 251,377 for 2022—the highest ever recorded), it would seem that Peter Huntingford’s assessment was bleakly correct: abortion can be preferred, as retrospective contraception, and used to test fertility.

People seldom respond with hand-written letters now, so this collection is a snap-shot in time, and, though anecdotal, an insightful archive into personal witness.