Stranded

by Sarah Goodwin

The last recourse of truly desperate people where abortion remained illegal. The case studies of women using homemade poisons to expel unviable pregnancies the law required them to see through to the bitter end. A choice no one should have to make.

None of them seem to realise how little it all means. How much of it is window-dressing. Play-acting at being a superior species, somehow apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. I’ve seen what hides behind all that. We are all animals when cornered.

‘I’d lost hope by then. No, I might have given up holding on to my delusion that somehow we were all still civilised people at heart. I might have tried to get them before they came for me.’