Alistair Campbell’s daughter candid about trauma of abortion

Stand-up comedian Grace Campbell has spoken at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of the grief and shame that followed her abortion.

The comic, who is the daughter of Tony Blair’s former political spokesman Alistair Campbell, had an abortion last year, after becoming pregnant by a man she ‘barely knew’.

Writing frankly about her experience in The Observer in June, Campbell explained why she had decided to “talk about it on stage”.

Grieving

Reflecting on her pre-abortion scan in an article for the Sunday newspaper, Campbell said the doctor “showed me what I was losing and simply said, ‘There it is’.”

Seven weeks after the abortion, she described herself as “stuck in a sour state of depression”. By that time, she recalled, the bleeding had finally stopped, but “the persistent crying, self-hatred and grief followed me everywhere I went”.

Seeing the baby on the screen, Campbell wrote, “would provide a photographic memory for a grief I didn’t know I could feel. A grief for something I never knew, but something I know I would have loved very much”.

An ardent advocate of a woman’s ‘right’ to have an abortion, Campbell believes she “made the right decision”, but admitted that “the simplification of it before, during, and after, meant that I experienced a lot of my grief entirely alone”.

‘Still reeling’

Speaking to The Times ahead of the Edinburgh Festival, she confessed that incorporating her experience of abortion into her stand-up show had not been a “cathartic, therapeutic process, because I’m still reeling”.

Right to Life UK spokeswoman Catherine Robinson commented: “Campbell’s story shows that the reality of ending a human life can profoundly affect even those who consider themselves pro-choice.

“We need a society where no woman feels that abortion is her only option, and where we value both mother and child”.