Woman's Hour - Family Secrets: Sarah and a secret revealed by a DNA test

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Sue Black, Women’s Equality Party candidate, joins Jenni to discuss why she has stepped down from the London mayoral race because of complications with her vaginal mesh implant.Flood warnings have been issued across the UK from Doncaster to Wales and more flooding is expected. Hundreds of properties have been affected and families evacuated. How are people on the ground coping? And what are communities doing to help each other? We hear from two women in Wales - Vicki Plumber Leclerc, who’s had to evacuate her home in Aberdulais with her two young kids and Tina Rankin who is running the emergency effort at her local church in PontypriddFamily Secrets - In most families there are things which don’t get talked about and the silences are often rooted in shame and in fear. In a new series of Family Secrets Sarah tells her story. She contacted Woman’s Hour because she wanted to talk about a family secret that she has only recently discovered at the age of 44.And an all-female team of investigative journalists from the 50-50 team at Open Democracy looked at a US backed network of crisis pregnancy centres in 18 countries. They say these were not the neutral counselling centres that they at first appeared to be. Undercover reporters who presented as women with unwanted pregnancies described being told that abortion increases the risks of physical and mental illness, that hospitals wouldn’t treat medical complications of abortion – and that women, even those who had been raped, would require the man’s consent. Nandini Archer, assistant editor of the 50-50 project explains how they worked over eighteen months and what they’ve found.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Caroline Donne Interviewed guest: Sue Black Interviewed guest: Vicki Plumber Leclerc Interviewed guest: Tina Rankin Interviewed guest: Nandini Archer

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday 19th February. In today's programme, the floods and the terrible damage and danger faced by families across the country. We go to South Wales to find out how women are coping with their frightened children and bringing communities together a new series of family secrets sarah uses the latest technology to

uncover her past and an investigation into pregnancy crisis centers funded by the american organization heartbeat international how reliable is the advice given to women who are seeking an abortion? Now, you may remember hearing from Professor Sue Black on Woman's Hour in the past. She left school at 16, married at 20, and had three children. By 25, she was a lone parent and went to university, and she's now Professor of Computer Science at the University of Durham. And the last time we spoke in 2016, she'd received an OBE for services to technology. She became a member of the Women's Equality Party and was to have stood for them as London Mayor in the election in May. But she's had to stand down because of complications with a vaginal mesh implant, which was inserted in in 2005 and she joins us from Durham. Sue, why after such a long time since the implant was inserted is it now forcing you to cut back on

your ambitions? Morning Jenny, well unfortunately it was fine So it was implanted in 2005, and for about at least 10 years, everything was fine. And I was just delighted, and in fact had forgotten that I'd had it done. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago, I'm 57 now, I went into menopause at about 50 and had various symptoms, all of which I thought were related to menopause. But kind of as time went on, there were some which didn't quite seem to fit menopause. And my sister read an article somewhere talking about mesh and talking about autoimmune response and people being excessively thirsty, having lumps on their body, and all different sorts of kind of strange symptoms.

And they were some of the things that I suffered from myself. Like I had to get up a couple of times a night to drink a pint of water at a time. I was drinking probably, who knows, like four or five litres of water a day. And for me that was normal. So I kind of had these weird symptoms. I didn't quite know what they were. And then I read this article about mesh and I thought, oh my goodness, maybe it's related to the mesh that was normal. So I kind of had these weird symptoms. I didn't quite know what they were. And then I read this article about mesh and I thought, oh, my goodness, maybe it's related to the mesh that I had put in 10 or 12 years ago. And then I joined a Facebook group called Sling the Mesh set up by Cath Sansom, which is now about 8000 women who've suffered from having vaginal mesh implanted in the UK and saw that loads of women

in there had similar symptoms and then kind of investigated more went to see a consultant in London went for a scan found out that the mesh that I'd had implanted had had shrunk and hardened and was cutting through my urethra so yeah not very nice at all and so then you must be in agonizing pain then well at the moment i mean i would say it's kind of uncomfortable at the moment i'm not in agonizing pain but the thing is so i had one partial removal 18 months ago which made things a lot better quite quickly so the sort of autoimmune symptoms went away within days. But then I had some complications from that operation, so then went back in before Christmas for another minor operation.

And I think the operation went fine, but then I fainted after the operation, lost some blood, ended up getting various infections, becoming anemic. And so it's actually that which has really kind of led to me stepping down because I'm kind of not quite back to normal now. So I'm kind of okay, but I'm not normal. Why did you have the implant in the first place? So I've got four children. And after the birth of my youngest daughter in 2004 I basically had um uh stress incontinence and it was kind of affecting my life it wasn't just minor it was you know it's like I really don't want to talk about this stuff

kind of like publicly but of course I have to do it no absolutely not just you I know I know and that's that's why I'm speaking about it publicly, because there are so many women that have the same symptoms. And, you know, and we need a proper solution to this rather than mesh, which is wrecking so many women's lives. You know, there's been a class action in California with 100,000 women just in California taking a class action against medical device companies there. And it's been banned in several countries. And so, you know, we need to get it banned here too. How aware were you at the outset when you decided to have it that it may cause problems? Sorry, I don't quite know what you mean.

Well, when they suggested you should have a mesh inserted to cure your urinary incontinence, was there any awareness that it might cause problems in the future? Oh, I see. So I was offered two different operations. So one called colpo suspension, which is the same kind of operation but using your own tissue. So I was told about that and about mesh. And colpo suspension was sold to me as an old-fashioned operation

which takes about three hours and I'd have to take several weeks off work. Or this new gold standard mesh operation, which was, it wasn't called mesh, it was called TVT, transvaginal tape, which I could be in and out the same day and kind of back to work within days. And, yeah, I was probably told that there were risks with both, which is true,

but it wasn't really pointed out to me the the real risks which we know now which can be life-changing unfortunately so it's a like most women or lots of women I went for the gold standard in quotes TVT mesh operation how does what you're going through now compare with the suffering you had before you had it with the urinary incontinence? Well I'm still I still have stress incontinence so because I've had partial mesh removal I'm kind of back to in terms of incontinence where I was before I had it implanted I've had two operations now and so I'm kind of almost back to where i was before the first operation but of course you know my basically my insides are kind of damaged and that's irreparable you know that can't go back to normal um and i i still need a further operation which would be

which will be the colpo suspension so at the moment i can't face another operation having felt so ill after the last one so i'm going to leave that for a while and then talk to my surgeon about maybe having that I don't know in maybe a year's time or something but again that's the operation that I could have had in the first place and if I had you know I wouldn't have had all of these issues now we have of course spoken to other women who've had this problem how much do you communicate with each other you mentioned the facebook sling the mesh group yeah uh yeah well so there's 8 000 women in the uk in there um talking to each other every day and and to be honest you know there's so many women in there that have suffered i feel like out of those 8 000 women i'm probably one of the best off. So most women have had worse symptoms than me.

Lots of women can't have sex, their husbands have left them, can't walk some, some in wheelchairs, and loads in extreme pain every single day. A lot of them gaslighted by the medical profession. And, you know, there's been cases where doctors have told families of women with terrible symptoms from mesh that the women need counselling. And they think the pain is all in their heads. So it's just so awful in so many ways. It's terrible. So what advice would you offer to anyone suffering as you did before you had the mesh? To talk to their GP, to get referred to a specialist unit and to consider colpo suspension,

so to talk to their surgeon if they need surgery about colpo suspension and don't have the mesh implanted. And to any woman who has similar complications with the mesh to yours, what would you say chat to the women on the group i mean there's there's loads of people in there who've had various different experiences and and anyone that asks for help gets it straight away from lots of different people with all different sorts of experience and and to kind of read all of the information that's out there and then make their mind up with their with their doctor with their surgeon on what to do

professor sue black the very best of luck with yours, and I hope you feel better soon. And thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. Thank you. And of course we'd like to hear from you. If you've suffered similar complications, do let us know about it. Now, as I'm sure you've heard in the news, the problem of flooding, which has affected so much of the country, is not even nearing a resolution.

There are six severe flood warnings which imply a potential danger to life, and South Wales is one of the areas that have been particularly hard hit. So how are people coping there and how much are communities pulling together to help each other? Well, Tina Rankin manages a cafe at St Catherine's Church in Pontypridd. Vicky Leclerc's home has been flooded in Aberdulais. Let me start with you, Vicky. What did you wake up to on Sunday morning? Ah, Vicky, we seem to have lost you we will retrieve you we hope Tina we're not going to lose you are we?

No I'm here What's the position in your area Tina? I know you personally haven't been flooded but are very conscious of what's going on around you Yes we have multiple areas in our parish which have been um devastated by the flooding the homes have completely been flooded out their businesses have been flooded out and um it's just heartbreaking just coming alongside and helping try and do what we can really to help alleviate that and go forward let's see if we can speak to vicky again vicky hello hi yeah you are there

i know it's not your fault we we lost you um but i was just asking you when you disappeared what you woke up to on Sunday morning. Oh, gosh. Well, three feet of water in my living room. Yeah, it was a really bad mess. Had you had any warning? Had you been able to move any of your furniture upstairs or were you completely unprepared for it? I don't want to say that I was completely unprepared because we'd had warnings during the day.

We'd been back and forth checking the river because we were told that high tide was at 11 o'clock. So me and one of my best friends went up to the river to have a look at half of 10. And it seemed to have really dropped at that time. So we just thought, oh, great, OK. It's dropped now we're going to be okay we'll go home go back to bed and what have you because obviously my children were

in bed um and then i woke at three in the morning to hundreds of missed calls on my phone my neighbors were ringing me saying they couldn't get to me because it was so bad down my end and like in comparison because obviously we flooded in storm callum back in 2018 and back then we'd had people knocking the door the police service everybody saying we need to move your cars to higher ground we need to get everything upstairs and that was in relation to this one it just wasn't anywhere near as bad but this this time we just had no, you know, we were waiting for that knock on the door. We didn't get it. So we didn't think that it was going to be half as bad as what it was.

Now, your children, the ones who were asleep upstairs, are five and one. Yeah. How do you explain to little ones like that what's happening? Well, obviously, with my one-year-old, there was no explaining. It was just, we need to get you out straight away he was crying his eyes out it was he didn't want to go to the fireman he just wanted me he's a bit of a clingy child to me really um so he was just hysterical screaming my five-year-old has obviously been through it before so he kind of knew what had happened um you know we carried him through the water it seemed like a bit of an adventure for him at the time but now

like you know he stayed at his nan's last night and he's wet the bed three times he's cried all night you know it's really affected him this time it's really sad to see and because we're staying in different places it's really difficult because I'm separated from them Tina what have you been

able to do to support people whose homes are flooded and who are in the sort of mess that Vicky's in? Well, we have a community cafe that runs from St Catherine's, and there are seven churches within the parish, and within one of the other churches we We have the main food bank distribution centre. And so between us, we have opened up further collection points for both St Catherine's and St Luke's have been open for extended hours to be able to put out food parcels that are needed for those that have been affected.

We also decided to open up the cafe and provide hot drinks and things like soup and sandwiches for anyone that has been affected by the flooding and anyone that's been helping with a clean-up operation. And as each day has gone on, we've sort of extended who we've been providing food to because it's become a lot more apparent that there are are many people that are actually in need of this in our local town centre um i would say at least half of all

premises were affected and unable to trade no electricity in most places so vicky what sort of state is your house in today? Well it's completely uninhabitable I can't go back there at the moment it's still covered in brown sludge I can't do anything about it

at the minute because we've got a loss adjuster come in on Saturday who obviously wants to see the damage I mean we can start cleaning up a little bit but we can't do too much because we need to show what the damage is to the property. And my car is stuck outside because my car is a right off because it was parked outside. So I can't even move my car to try and get a skip there to start clearing out. It's really difficult at the moment Tina what sort of advice are you giving to people who

have been flooded about what immediately they need to do we've been connecting with the local authorities and the emergency centres that have been set up in the areas and just contact your

insurance if you've got insurance, as soon as possible to find out whether you're covered. The council have been in, I think a lot of people were housed by Sunday night or people stayed with friends. There's been a real community rally around of everybody getting stuck in and helping facebook and social media groups have been set up so people can share information about what they need and all we've done really is just help point people in the right direction of where we know there is help and advice um what what everybody together what help vicky have you found you've had from from the community i mean i know the

welsh government has said that they've been working around the clock with agencies to keep people safe and informed and the first minister is today announced up to a 10 million pound amount to deal with the immediate impact of the storms how much help are you actually getting from from the government um oh well nothing really at the minute i i've not heard you know don't get me wrong local councillors have been around knocking doors but when you're unable to live in your house knocking doors isn't really the best way forward because obviously i can't be there so you know all of the stuff that's happening in the street at the moment i i haven't really seen as such because i've not been able to stay there my friends and the neighbors and the

community have been absolutely amazing but you know there's upsides and downsides you know because everybody's obviously rallied around so quickly but i've got nowhere people are offering i've had like five offers of sofas i've had tables and chairs and things like that but obviously i've got nowhere to put anything at the minute i need to establish where i'm actually going to live before i can even accept any offers of help from the community um beth and saeed has messaged she's been very helpful and also Caroline Jones, the AM but they are the only two representatives that I've really heard from Well, Vicky Leclerc

and Tina Rankin, thank you both very much indeed for joining us this morning and I hope eventually you will get things sorted out and I'm so sorry to hear about the kind of problems that you're having. And thank you very much for taking the time to join us today.

Now, still to come in today's programme, the team of female journalists who've been investigating crisis pregnancy centres in 18 countries. How reliable is the information they give to a woman seeking an abortion? And the serial, the third episode of Girls of Riyadh. Now, as you may be aware by now, Friday's programme this week will be devoted to one Phoebe Waller-Smith. She of Killing Eve, James Bond, and of course the television series Fleabag. Now, we spoke for quite a while and then he came up. We've got this far without much discussion of the hot priest.

How did that... Both of us have been thinking about him the entire time though, right? I know. I mean, how did that character come about and how did you persuade Andrew to do it? And you can find out what she said on Friday and she is called Phoebe Waller-Bridge, not Smith. Don't ask me why that came out. That's on Friday, the whole programme. Now, earlier in the week, you may have missed Daisy May Cooper talking about the new series of This Country, and Cathy Marston, who's choreographed the new ballet The Cellist, based on the life of Jacqueline Dupre. If you miss the live programme, all you have to do is go to the BBC

Sounds app, look for Woman's Hour, and there it will be. Now today we begin a new series of family secrets. Sarah got in touch with us because she wanted to talk about a family secret that she had only recently discovered at the age of 44. Jo Morris asked her what had prompted her to wonder if all was not quite as it seemed in her family life Yes, I think with hindsight there are a couple of things When I was about 18 my parents had an argument I remember my mum saying to my dad, I'm going to tell her I asked him, what did she mean by that? And he said, oh nothing nothing it's nothing and it was

just dismissed but I never forgot never forgot that. I think I did always have a sense of there being some sort of family secret I thought it might be something dark I don't know about a relative or something like that I didn't I didn't imagine that it would be this. Something dark? Yeah, because my parents are not close to their families. We never saw them when I was growing up. They were sort of quite isolated from their relatives and estranged from them in some respects. So I just thought it was something like that.

There was some deep, dark secret concerning somebody else. And in fact, even when I was very close to discovering the truth I remember saying to my mother-in-law oh there's some family secret I'm about to find it out and I really at that point still didn't think that it was about me. What was life like growing up in your family? I grew up as an only child and my parents did not have a big social circle they did not have lots of friends it was a very quiet household we didn't really have visitors it was just the three of us

the house was very very regimented I did not have friends around to play I did not have sleepovers my mum has a love of history and so we would often spend summer holidays going around Elizabethan houses and castles and that kind of thing and in many ways it was a perfectly happy childhood I had everything that you could possibly want you know not a hair out of place she's very concerned with appearances and she wanted

everything to be perfect and she's still like that now but that's just the way it was and I didn't know any different when I started going to other people's houses then I realized oh not everyone lives like this so yes it was definitely restrictive but also quite funny I was not a sporty person at all but the only thing I was good at was long jump because my mother would make me jump over a Persian rug every day to get from the back door to the staircase in our house. She deliberately positioned a rug there and couldn't bear for anyone to step on it. And she had a little brush and she would comb all the tassels out and it looked beautiful, but I had to jump over it every day. You couldn't step on it and that that kind of thing just became normal. I mean you're laughing but that's quite. Yeah

my mum laughs about it now as well. So Sarah you wrote to us because you've only very recently discovered a family secret. Where does your story begin? It begins probably about five or six years ago. I am interested in history and I joined a genealogy website in order to look into family history. I love the idea of finding distant relatives, people maybe that look like me, because growing up as an only child, I was always curious about that it would be nice to look at someone else and think that we looked alike and so I joined the website and I got very very far back on both sides of my family my dad's side I got back to the 1700s in Ireland and my mother's side I got back pre the Norman conquest but I was surprised that when I would go to them periodically and tell them these wonderful things that I'd found out that they were not particularly enthusiastic and I was surprised that when I would go to them periodically and tell them these wonderful things that I'd found out that they were not particularly enthusiastic. And I was so surprised by that.

And I even went on a pilgrimage with my husband to a huge house, medieval house that her family and my 14 times great grandfather had built. And it felt very special to go around and think wow one of my ancestors built this house it's amazing and she just wasn't interested. I was on holiday this summer and in the evenings I didn't have that much to do I was with the children I was with my husband's extended family but he was working and I thought oh I might just might just have a look on on this website and see if anything is new I had done a DNA test about a year ago through the website I got this hit and it said this person is a first cousin and had the name of this this man he's Welsh and I was thinking how is this possible I only have two first cousins and I know

who they are although I'm not in touch with them I know who they are my dad has two brothers my mother is an only child so how can how can this be a first cousin and that really started this off I think that if he had not done this man had not done a DNA test I probably would have been non the wiser did you mention this to your family did you mention this to your mom and dad i did i mentioned it to them i said do you have any welsh relatives because i matched with these people and i didn't know we had any welsh relatives and is it possible that you know you've got a brother or sister or something that you don't know about and my dad was very very cagey about that at first he sort of said um well maybe my dad did travel around a lot

yes I suppose but you know what are you really you know hoping to achieve here and you know often it's better just to let these things lie and And he was very, very uncomfortable with it. And I think it was at that point, I'd never seen a full birth certificate. I'd only ever seen a short form one. And the story was that it had been lost in a house move. And so, you know, I just got the short one. That's all I needed to get passports and for identification purposes. And I don't know what made me think I'm going to apply for a copy of that full one I don't know what I was expecting to find then I was on holiday so it was very difficult because I was

with the extended family there was a family birthday happening a big 40th birthday and the children were with me and we were you know going out during the day and doing family activities but the whole time I was thinking when can I get back to this when can I get back onto messenger and when can I speak to my husband and and talk about this with him and so he decided that he would apply for my birth certificate and he applied for it and it came back that they didn't have a record of me, then alarm bells were really ringing and I was very, very perturbed by that. I rang up the registry office myself and they said, well, you know, we have two copies of everyone's birth certificate.

One is held in London centrally and one will be held with your local registry office where you were born. So when you heard them say there's no one of that name what was running through your mind how did you feel it felt utterly bizarre and i thought that i must be a mistake but who am i it's hard to put into words how i felt knowing that there's no record of you i think throughout this the discovery part of this, I also felt really ashamed. And I'm not really sure why, but I definitely did feel a deep sense of shame about it.

I then got on the phone to my local register office where I was born. And I was thinking, there's a mistake. They'll have a copy. They'll have the other copy. But I think at that point, actually, deep down, I knew that they were going to say, no, we don't have a copy. And that is exactly what they said. Then they mentioned adoption. They said, you know, we're not saying that you are adopted, but have you considered that you might want to contact the adoption register? And then all of this sort of came to a head on the morning of my brother-in-law's 40th birthday.

So we were going for a lunch, 15 family members it was a beautiful sunny day we were going down to a hotel by the beach it was just it was perfect the whole time I was it was going round and round in my head like am I adopted what's going on I'd said to my dad that I was concerned about who this cousin was my dad had called me a couple of times and said oh are you still looking into this and are you actually in touch with these people? But he was very, very worried at that point. As I was leaving the party, I was in the car with my in-laws. My dad rang and said, Sarah, I need to talk to you about something. So I knew. And he said, are you by yourself? And I said, no, I'm in the car with my in-laws and he said fine

when you get back to the house make sure that you're by yourself and then call me my face was hot and I felt very anxious desperately wanted to get home the rest of the family were then going out they took the children so I was in the house by myself I spoke to him and he he used a really odd turn of phrase he said you're our daughter but you were not born of us I thought gosh that's a that's a very odd way of putting it he said you know we we couldn't have children and we adopted you as a baby and your mother's name is and he told me what my birth mother's name was and he said you must do whatever you feel that you want to do in terms of contacting this person we were given very little information this was a closed adoption

and we were told that you should not be able to get in touch with your birth mother there was a closed adoption and we were told that you should not be able to get in touch with your birth mother there was a court order we were very worried that if we told you any of this that you might be taken away from us and that's why we've we've never told you he said we understand if you don't want to see us anymore that was very tough and I said no of course not we've spent a lifetime together and that was it and that's how I discovered what I discovered and tomorrow the aftermath of Sarah's discovery and you can hear all the family secrets from the first series by going to the Women's Hour website an American organization called Heartbeat International is behind a network of pregnancy crisis centres around the world.

They claim to be neutral counselling centres offering unbiased advice to women who come to them for help. Well, a team of investigative journalists, all women from the website Open Democracy, known as 5050, has spent nine months working undercover to find out how neutral such centres are. They've looked at 33 of the centres in 18 countries across the world and have now published their report. Nandini Archer is the assistant editor of the 5050 team. Nandini, what alerted you to concerns about these centres?

Well, we've been working on this series for a couple of years now called Tracking the Backlash, where we've basically been investigating the backlash to women's and LGBT rights around the world. And so that looks at how organised and coordinated opposition to women's and LGBT rights are looking to roll back or block these rights. And so as part of that, we came across various US Christian right groups, and one of them was Heartbeat International.

And what they've done in the US, along with a couple of other groups, is really pioneer these crisis pregnancy centres. On their website, it says that they have these centres or they have affiliates on every inhabited continent around the world. So what we wanted to do really was see what they were doing in Italy and what they were doing in Ukraine and what they were doing in all these different countries, because they have really hit the headlines in the US for often hiding their anti-abortion stances. How did the centres appear to the women who were using them? Yeah, so in the US, for instance, you can find billboards saying things like,

are you pregnant? Are you scared? Come here for help. And so they often appear like neutral medical facilities. And you would be totally forgiven for thinking that you could go there to get genuine abortion advice, contraception advice, if you were facing a crisis pregnancy. And so what we found when we looked at centres around the world was very much the same. Now, the Secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum

for Sexual and Reproductive Rights has expressed some concerns that women, as was said, are encountering disinformation, emotional manipulation and outright deceit. What were your undercover reporters told? They were told, I mean, a really big range of things. So we sent reporters into 18 different countries. In some cases, you know, there were a lot of mentions of abortion increasing risks of cancer increasing mental illness and this kind of stuff the thing that I found really shocking in particular were a lot of our reporters went undercover saying that they had experienced rape or incest or domestic violence and so they were told things like in Argentina, a woman who said she was in a domestic violence relationship was told by center staff, well, now you're a victim.

But if you have an abortion, you will become part of that violence. And the same thing happened in Israel, where a reporter said that she had gone out with her cousin. She didn't know him that well. She suspected her drink was spiked. She was now pregnant um and she was told by centre staff well maybe you should marry your cousin you are now 30 um maybe it's your time and so now yeah i know that some similar things were said in south africa as well but the 1996 choice on termination of Pregnancy Act there stipulates that cancelling of pregnant women must be non-directive. So how is this kind of advice continuing, which contravenes such an act?

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible. kind of global machinery this very coordinated um attack on on abortion rights um that's coming from this incredibly influential uh u.s christian right group that is linked to power and influence and i think that's how um you know i think a lot of the time people or the way these centers appear but also um anti-abortion views in general people might might think that, you know, I'm sure there are plenty of ordinary religious and ordinary people that have views on abortion and for and against it. But what this investigation shows is that this is, you know, that these centres are not some kind of nice local counselling things. This is, you know, a coordinated strategy. Now, Heartbeats International have said this abortion ends the life of a

developing human baby the fact remains that abortion carries risk to the woman how do you respond to that? I mean so we had one reporter who went attended two Heartbeat International trainings for example to see what they were telling, how they were training their staff and what they were telling them. And in that, in these trainings, she was kind of bombarded with like a barrage of like statistics and supposed studies like this saying, you know, abortion then like contacted various uh you know global uh global health bodies and doctors and experts in these fields and a lot of you know well all of this has been debunked by global health bodies you know the other thing they told us is that you infer they're a franchise model of pregnancy centres, which they deny. They also say they're not for profit, they are faith-based,

offering alternatives to abortion, but ensure non-discrimination. The centres, they say, are autonomous. How do you respond to that? Well, I'm not sure what they're trying to say there, in the sense we didn't say that they were a franchise i think um there are two things really on the on their website they say quite clearly that in order to be an international affiliate in order to be affiliated with heartbeat international their affiliates need to follow certain guidelines and these guidelines include providing women with accurate information. And what we found by going undercover was that women were not being provided with accurate

information. In Spain, for instance, our reporter was given material that said, if she was to have an abortion, she could be 144% more likely to abuse her future children, for instance. And the second thing is, is that this whole project was born out of a kind of like very intense data journalism and we kind of tracked Heartbeat's money around the world and what they were spending. And part of this process, we found the names of specific grantees that they were, you know, funding. So it's not just that these organisations have this affiliate status, it's also that they are directly receiving funding from them. Now, politicians in a number of countries, and I mentioned the European Union there,

have expressed concern about what you've uncovered. What action do you expect to be taken? I'm not sure. Our role was to investigate and expose this. And I think that, you know, we've had lawmakers all over the world now and 30 different European legislators call this, you know, a threat to democracy, that this is an ethical violation. And we'll be checking in to see how it's followed up.

Now, the Trump White House has been openly anti-abortion. Heartbeat International is open about its position. Why are you more concerned about these countries around the world than American centres? We're not necessarily more concerned, but these centres have their roots in the US and there's been quite a lot of amazing investigative journalism there exposing how these centres operate there. And so what we wanted to do was something quite new and show how these centres are also operating around the world.

Nandini Archer, ending Wednesday's edition of Woman's Hour. We had lots of response from you on the vaginal mesh question. Davina sent an email, she said, I had mesh inserted for a giant hiatus hernia three years ago. Since then, I have had spasmodic, sharp, stabbing pain, which I am convinced is due to the mesh. It's not only vaginal mesh, which is a problem. Jill emailed, I'm also a mesh injured lady. Compared to some, I'm physically working okay, but when I listen or read anyone's story, I'm an emotional mess. I'm on the Facebook group and it's quite distressing to hear all the pain everyone has gone through and continue to do so. I felt I wasn't given any information about what was going to happen after the operation.

The one I had wasn't even the one I expected. I feel this situation is disgusting and we've been left vulnerable and it's appalling. Anna emailed, I gave birth to my third child at 42, she's now 10 and I'm finally getting my head around the wee problem I've had since. I was so upset for years that I had accidents when I ran, danced, sneezed, coughed and laughed. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. On the floods, Catherine emailed, this brought back all the memories of being flooded in 2007 in Gloucestershire. We'd put sandbags in front of the outside door, but by six in the morning, so much water had come in,

we were woken by the banging of glass and china floating inside cupboards and the water was three feet high i had two little boys under three who sat at the top of the stairs asking to go swimming we had no help from public services only the kindness of friends and neighbors we were out of the house for almost six months. Most emotional was what we lost, letters and photographs being the irreplaceable items. On adoption, Wendy sent an email, just driving home in tears, listening to Sarah's story. Such a shock, her father saying they'd understand if she wanted no further contact.

I was adopted, and although I've always known, it was a secret my siblings, not adopted and younger, don't know. I'm in my 60s and still feel ashamed. And then on the abortion question, someone who didn't want to be named sent an email. I had a termination when I was 18. I'm now 43. I was young, pregnant and scared. I went to my local

GP and I was told that I should have the baby, that abortion was evil and that I should have the baby adopted. They told me that they wouldn't help me. I have never revealed this to anyone and to this day I am so shocked at the thought of it and I wonder how many other girls received that treatment in the UK. Now do join me tomorrow when Catherine Phipps will be with me to cook the perfect winter salad and a cake and the cake is pear and rosemary. That's tomorrow, two minutes past ten. Bye bye. What are you interested in?

And I mean really interested in. Really into box certificates. Pencils. Crinoline mania. So much so that if you see it or hold it or just think about it, then everything stops. And then, one day

it just vanished. Each week in the Boring Talks podcast join then, one day, it just vanished. Each week in the Boring Talks podcast, join me, James Ward, as I introduce a guest speaker to share their own fascination for a very niche subject. But what could it possibly be? From the personal joys of pencils and teletext to the expectant sounds of old computer games loading, every talk is a varied and surprising treat.

Hear that? Lovely. The Boring Talks. Subscribe right now on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service,

The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.