“It was a choice that saved my life, but my body still felt like it was grieving”: in conversation with Glasgow Students for Choice’s Vice President about abortion

Kate Bailey Tonkin talks with Helena about abortion’s academic and personal impact, the failures of the Good Cause process, and the Choice4Change campaign she’s leading for policy reform

Helena* found out she was pregnant three weeks before her final year exams. “It fundamentally impacted how I performed,” she says. “Obviously, what I was going to do and how I was going to get an abortion was at the forefront of my mind. Nothing else mattered.” At the time, she was also applying for further education and planning for her future. “I was sitting there, terrified out of my mind, pregnant, writing a personal statement to get into the accelerated law degree at the University of Glasgow.”

The timing was already challenging for Helena, but her difficulties escalated weeks later when attempting to navigate the University’s Good Cause process – a system intended to support students by allowing them to apply for extensions or resits in cases of significant personal hardship. She was shocked to find no mention of reproductive health issues in the listed examples of adverse circumstances. “In my emotional distress, I went on to the University website [to apply for Good Cause]… What struck me was the fact that it didn’t have anything to do with pregnancy termination or emergency contraception. They have explicit statements of what constitutes a Good Cause claim and there was nothing to do with reproductive healthcare. And I just thought, OK, well, then this doesn’t constitute a Good Cause claim.”

While there is technically an option to apply for Good Cause after situations such as abortion, it is buried under a second drop-down towards the bottom of the page. In their policy brief advocating for changes to the Good Cause system, Glasgow Students for Choice (GSC) argue that “students experiencing sexual and gendered crises will only read the first Good Cause drop-down header titled “What circumstances would be considered Good Cause” which has no mention of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth.” This omission, they say, could lead students, as in Helena’s case, to assume their experience isn’t significant enough for a Good Cause claim.

Even when students do find the relevant information, Good Cause claims still require medical proof – such as a doctor’s note for an abortion. Helena explains that this proof isn’t always easy to obtain. “When you’re in the room and you’re talking with one of the doctors at the Sandyford clinic, it’s a very overwhelming experience. When I was leaving, I didn’t even think of asking for any proof that they had given me the termination.”

In addition to the emotional labour of obtaining medical proof, the system also requires verification of the procedure from a third party who cannot be a family member or housemate. This stipulation often forces students to disclose their abortion to someone outside their immediate circle, which can feel like a violation of personal boundaries. For Helena, this was simply too much. “I didn’t want to do that either,” she explains. She reflects on the insularity she felt at that time, noting that the lack of discourse around reproductive healthcare at the University only deepened her sense of isolation. “I instinctively knew that it would be very difficult to [get support], which I think speaks to a systematic failing.”

On a personal level, Helena’s recovery from her abortion was both emotional and physical. After the procedure, she bled for five weeks and found herself feeling disconnected from her body, a sensation she describes as a “divorce of self”. This feeling caught her off guard. “I was surprised by how much it impacted me and how much sadness it brought into my life,” she says. “Previously, I had looked at it as solely a medical procedure. I hadn’t considered the emotional or spiritual aspect of it.” Helena grappled with this dichotomy: while she understood that the abortion was the best choice, she still felt a deep sense of loss. “I was so cognizant that this was an explicit choice which fundamentally saved the trajectory of my life… but biologically my body didn’t know that. I know every abortion is different, but it felt like I was grieving something that I mentally didn’t want.” The experience deepened some relationships with those she trusted, but also led her to isolate herself from some people within her wider circle as well as family members. “My family is deeply religious and I didn’t want to take the risk of seeing how they would respond. I still don’t.”

As Maria describes her struggles with abortion and its aftermath, I’m struck by her resilience – graduating with a first-class degree despite it all. It’s an impressive feat, especially in the face of a situation that Maria describes as “traumatic”. Many might have distanced themselves from it entirely, yet a year later, Helena found herself helping a friend navigate the same difficult process. “It felt very healing to have information and advice to give that I didn’t have at the time. But this is how I found out that there are such evidential barriers.” She encouraged her friend to obtain a doctor’s note from the Sandyford clinic after the abortion, but the emotional toll of that request was significant. “It triggers you again to provide such acute evidence, to have to go back to the hospital. When she got her note, it was not a positive experience at all. It was very much an afterthought to [the nurses].” Her friend also struggled with the lack of anonymity in the Good Cause system, where personal information often has to move up the academic hierarchy. “She entrusted a professor, but then the head of her history department then knew about it as well.” 

GSC echoes this, claiming that “Good Cause claims within the Medical School (for example) are passed through a long chain of faculty, thus violating discretion and confidentiality.” During the research phase of GSC’s policy brief, several survey respondents reported feeling hesitant to come forward with Good Cause claims due to this lack of discretion, believing their personal issues would be held on their record.

Helena points out that these failings in the Good Cause process extend beyond reproductive health issues. She recalls her experience filing a Good Cause claim after a man followed her home one night, which left her fearful of walking alone after dark and significantly impacted her everyday life. “I wouldn’t leave the house for a couple of months after dark, and it was getting dark at 4pm. So I was limiting myself out of fear.” To file the claim, she needed a police report, but recalling the details of the experience was an ordeal she wasn’t prepared for. She had to remember the incident and describe the man’s face, but she struggled to remember what he looked like – her “brain was trying to push the memory out”. While navigating the official system was difficult, Helena found more support from individual professors, who allowed her extended deadlines without formal Good Cause claims. “It was just under the table, sort of.”

The Choice4Change campaign, led by GSC, aims to address these systemic issues within the Good Cause process, specifically advocating for the removal of proof requirements in cases of abortion and sexual assault. Helena, who played a key role in designing the Good Cause section of the policy brief, sees this as an essential step in building trust between students and the University. “We want to open a new channel of communication,” she explains. Helena believes that students are unlikely to share their vulnerabilities unless they feel that the University trusts them and takes them seriously. She points out a lack of responsiveness from the University: “In recent years, they haven’t ratified anything [reproductive health related] because of student requests. Students are frustrated and they want their reproductive health to be treated with the same respect as any other medical issue.”

In response to concerns that removing the proof requirement could lead to abuses of the Good Cause system, Helena dismisses such speculation as a “poor justification” for inaction. “The University should look at policy changes from a utilitarian perspective. You cannot control individual actions or prevent people abusing the system – that happens within every system. People are already abusing University processes on other matters unrelated to reproductive health. What will protect the majority of the students?”

So, what needs to happen for the Choice4Change campaign and its proposed changes to the Good Cause process to be implemented? Helena explains, “This will be the third year we’re campaigning for this policy brief. We have the support of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC). But in order for it to be properly considered, we need more student support – more discussion on campus, more pressure with SRC representatives. Without their support, it’s hard to reach the decision-makers.” However, she is optimistic about recent changes at the University, like the new incoming Principal, adding, “A fresh pair of eyes could really help”.

She says that the issue of classism needs to be considered in any policy change regarding reproductive rights. “Being literate in reproductive health is a privilege,” she says, explaining that sex education remains taboo in many lower-class communities. “A lot of people in Glasgow were left out of the advent of modern sexuality. If you didn’t have access to tertiary education, you were outside of conversations about sex ed.” These generational gaps, she argues, affect young people who make it to university today, as many are still raised in environments devoid of these discussions.

Helena’s own upbringing shaped her understanding of these disparities; she attended high school in the UAE, living in Dubai for eight years before starting university. “We never had a class on sexual health. My mother was a doctor and we had a couple of discussions, which were quite painfully awkward, and they then realised that I wasn’t receiving sex ed at school. So I came to the University of Glasgow quite unprepared for the realities of being a sexually active young woman.” She calls for an intersectional evaluation of who is being left out from sexual health education: “We have such a mixed demographic, and there’s a lack of support for international students and the different cultural attitudes towards abortions.”

Helena says she hopes to see a wider cultural shift, both within Glasgow and at universities across the UK, towards a system that is “proactive, rather than reactive”. She believes reproductive healthcare should be central to University provisions, not just provided upon request. “We need signposting to abortion clinics, et cetera, within the University’s provisions. It should be fundamental,” she says. She references the recently passed buffer zone bill in Scotland that prevents anti-abortion protests near clinics. “I think it speaks to a larger societal shift – viewing the right to an abortion and education about sexual health as human rights, not criminal law issues.” She stresses that universities need to catch up to this change, adding, “If grand institutions of tertiary education bolster that change, they’ll provide examples of how reproductive healthcare should be treated and that it should be at the forefront of the university experience.”

She explains that her desire for change ultimately stems from the isolation she felt during her abortion and the lack of support she received. “It was traumatic, and I want systemic change so students don’t feel what I felt. But the most important conversations are absolutely not comfortable.”

*name changed