Woman's Hour - Helen Mirren, Talking about abortion, Samantha Power

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Helen Mirren talks about equal pay and her new film, The Good Liar, in which she co-stars with Sir Ian McKellen. In a new series, listeners talk about their experiences of abortion. Today it is a woman we are calling Clare who got pregnant in the 1980s in rural Scotland just before her 18th birthday. Samantha Power was President Obama's ambassador in the UN between 2013 and 2017. A Pulitzer Prize winner, her latest book is a memoir, The Education of An Idealist.Presenter: Jane Garvey Interviewed guest: Helen Mirren Interviewed guest: Samantha Power Reporter: Henrietta Harrison Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

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. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. It is. Good morning. Helen Mirren is our guest on the programme today. And we'll also meet the woman who was Obama's ambassador to the UN. Samantha Power is live on the programme. And we start a new series about abortion. Five different women tell their very personal stories on Woman's Hour this week and indeed next as well. Now, Dame Helen Mirren co-stars with Sir Ian McKellen in a new film, The Good Liar.

It's based on a novel by Nicholas Searle. Helen is a retired teacher. She's recently widowed and she's dipping her toe into the world of online dating. Ian is the con man she meets. or is it as clear cut as that? Of course it isn't. A film that starts behind the net curtains of suburbia, takes you to post-war Berlin. And actually the truth is you're never entirely sure who's out to get who.

Something I put to Dame Helen. On the face of it, this is a film about scamming and about women being had. It turns out not to be as simple as that, but are you ripe to be... You couldn't be scammed, could you? You're far too savvy. Actually, I have been scammed. I was scammed. I was so embarrassed about it.

And that's the terrible thing, isn't it? When you're scammed, you're so mortified that you really don't tell anyone because it's so embarrassing and humiliating. There's hardly anyone listening, so you're scammed, you're so mortified that you really don't tell anyone because it's so embarrassing, humiliating. Well, there's hardly anyone listening, so you can tell me. Of course. Oh, it was one of those things when they, it was to do with so-called, it was in America, and I had won a prize, you know, and they did it brilliantly and I was suspicious and they said oh you know and they said I've got her I've got her and this is the phone when I picked up the phone they said I've

got her I've got her oh we're so excited to tell you you've won this prize I said if I how the only caveat why didn't I realize was was in order to get the prize i had to send the money ah you know and in return they would send and they did it wasn't like i didn't get anything they sent these things weird things like a a 3d camera i remember and a sort of fake diamond um tennis bracelet just sort of weird things yes but I was suspicious and I said where are you phoning from and where were the the units the company or where is it based we're based in New Orleans I said oh what address and they gave me an address I said oh that's interesting because I know it was true. I happen to be coming to New Orleans next week. So I'll pop in and see you, sort of thing.

And they sort of went all a bit pear-shaped when I said that. Did they know who you were? No, no. You could have been anyone. I was sort of anyone. Yeah, no, absolutely. But yes, I was scammed, definitely. So, you know, and I think one is scammed more often than one realises as well.

Well, I was going to ask you about that. As we go through life, we discover that perhaps there were questions we ought to have asked a long time ago that we are now asking about the way women are treated, for example. Absolutely, like pay. I mean, it was sort of notorious and well-known in my industry that women were paid a fraction of what the men were paid. Meryl Streep has always often talked about it quite rightfully. The explanation was always, well, cinema is driven by men, boys, actually. And it is true to a certain extent it used to be anyway i don't know so much anymore but uh the people who get up and go out to the cinema are boys between the ages of 16 and 26 so the the cinema industry to a certain extent not everything of course movies like ours are going to be a completely different audience.

And also, and I found this very depressing, that if a young couple are going out on a date, sort of 18, 19-year-olds, they're going to see the movie the boy wants to see. They won't go and see the movie that the girl wants to see. And I found that very depressing, And apparently that's still the case. So anyway, that was always the explanation for why the male stars always got paid more than the female stars. Do you know when you were last ripped off? Financially? No.

No, I don't, because the other thing is you don't know how much your co-star is being paid. Well, that means I've got to ask you about Sir Ian McKellen. He's a knight, you're a dame. You're a big star, he's a big star. You're both great actors. Who got paid more? I have no idea. I suspect we both got paid the same, honestly.

Could you ask him? Yes, I could. Yes, I could. Absolutely. Can you go and ask him now? I will, but honestly, I can't remember how much I was paid at this point. Brilliant. So, you know, certain films, honestly, you don't do in that way for the money. And I suspect you remember there was that very cataclysmic moment when Michelle Williams was paid literally something like $1,000 to do a reshoot on a movie.

That's right. And her co-star was paid literally something like a thousand dollars to do a reshoot on a movie and her co-star was paid a million because that was all to do with her looking at the work as work how can I say this it was a it was an act of generosity on her part it seemed to me of of I want to support the film and there's nothing wrong with that attitude and there's nothing wrong with that attitude exactly I think there's something wrong with the attitude that says you need me i've got you have a barrel pay me pay me and you know so i don't want to criticize her i'm not criticizing her for that but it was a shocking disparity but it as much as anything it was a disparity of attitude see people listening to this will think well you, you'd be the first to admit it, a very well-paid woman. I am a well-paid woman. What are these two old biddies wittering on about money for?

This isn't relevant to real women's lives. But it is because if women like you are not paid in the right way, then there is a trickle-down effect here, isn't there? In the end, it will matter to women who work in major supermarkets and do zero-hours contracts, cleaning offices and all the rest of it. An example has to come right from the top, and it will eventually have an impact further down. Well, you know, you hope so, but what really honestly pisses me off is the huge disparity in the appreciation of women's expertise. And, you know, just think of making a shirt.

I love to make my own clothes very badly. Incidentally, I'm a terrible, useless, but I love to make my own clothes very badly. Incidentally, I'm a terrible, I'm useless, but I love the process. But, you know, it's very difficult to turn a collar, to put in a placket, to put in a zip. It's really expertise. And why that incredible, agile expertise of women is so undervalued. I go to thrift stores, you know, junk stores, and I buy beautifully embroidered doilies and stuff. I don't have any use for them, but I love the work. The work is so beautiful and it's so undervalued. Whereas you see, you know, something, a piece of carpentry made by a man, beautiful.

I'm not saying it's not. It's absolutely beautiful. But it's much more highly valued than that incredibly intricate, women's incredible expertise and artistry and artisanally, what's the right word? Artisanally. Artisanally. I'll have to check on that with Radio 4, I don't know. But their artisanal work is so underappreciated. And then, of course, it goes on to, I remember in the car industry, it was something to do with the making of the leather work. Yes, the car seats at Ford. The car seats at Ford.

Or nursing. Or teaching. Or childcare. You know, these are very highly expertise jobs requiring incredible understanding and patience and knowledge and professionalism and constantly undervalued. But women have a part to play here, don't they, in supporting other women in their work.

Men are great at supporting other men. Women sometimes, well, we know this, can be unnecessarily carpy. What would you say about that? Women being carpy? About each other, not supporting each other to the degree that perhaps we should do. It's not as though women aren't in the film industry. They are. They have been. Perhaps women in the past should have done more to support other women.

I mean, I'm guessing. I don't know that they haven't. It's tough when you're in a world where you're constantly unemployed. You know, it's not like you're in a job and you've got a job even for five years. You've got it maybe for three months, maybe for two weeks. You come in, you do the job and you're off. And now you're looking for the next job. So it's quite hard, A, to get a grip on what's going on in general on that job. And I think women, as soon as they were given the opportunity, if you like, to support each other, they started doing it.

But, you know, it's really hard to say I support women, camera women, when there are no camera women. And there still aren't. Well, it's coming. That's definitely coming. Really, that's a huge change that I've seen. How many female directors have you worked with? Actually, very few. I've only worked with one. And that's an enormous change that's happened, both in the theatre and in film.

Huge, huge change. I mean, when I was in the theatre up to not that many years ago, there were very, very, very few, if any, sort of female theatre directors. And it's fantastic to see that change. And I know you've talked about women like Phoebe Waller-Bridge who appear to be absolutely in charge of their own destiny and their own careers and calling the shots right from the start. You wouldn't have seen that either, would you, 20 years ago?

No, no, absolutely not. And I think that was, you know, to a certain extent our failing, my failing and, you know, me as a part of a generation and a group of people who, as much as we might, as you say, carped about it, it's very difficult to carp, isn't it? When the culture is against you, you're shouting into a void. But I believe in shouting I didn't think I did believe in shouting when I was young honestly but I've realized getting older that shouting is very important and it's those women who make themselves Greta you know young Greta

it's the it's the girls and the women who stand up there and they shout. And we saw it with the suffragettes, actually. Shouting matters. You have to make yourself unpopular and unattractive and annoying and irritating and everything. Would you have thought when you first got the DCI Tennyson job, because it's actually against the law to interview Helen Mirren without mentioning prime suspect. So I have got to. It's much beloved of many of our listeners. Might you have imagined when you got that role, because I gather there was a certain amount of disquiet about a woman detective being at the centre of a big TV show.

Would you have thought that you'd have been lead? You are the draw in major Hollywood films like The Good Liar. Me and Ian. You and your friend Ian, yes. And you both are the you are the draw in major hollywood films like the good liar me and ian yeah you and your friend yes and you both are the same um but you know what i mean you might you might not have predicted that might you no no absolutely and linda laplante you know linda has done a great deal for women in drama women characters before prime she wrote Widows, and she was out there. The disquiet, if you like, was the powers that be at Granada or ITV, who were not at all sure that a woman-led, a single woman-led drama would, that the audience would buy it, and in the end you're in an economic world, you know know what you're putting out there has

got to be bought but of course as is you often the case the powers that be there the bureaucracy is a few steps behind what's happening in the world that is dame helen mirren who i talked to last week and her film the good liar is this, the end of this week, actually, the 8th of November. And as I said at the start there, it's one of those films, I hadn't read the book, didn't know what to expect. And the film took me to places I hadn't expected to go. It's interesting. And she is a great actress. On Thursday, children's vaccinations. Have you ever hesitated about having your children vaccinated? If you've thought twice about it, why? Have you

got questions that you can't yet find answers for? We want to hear from you. You can email the programme via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour is the best place really to contact the programme. And also on this, how do you feel about your sex life if you're in your 40s? Perhaps your kids are older, depending on when you had them, of course. Do you feel you're now able to focus on it again? Is it true that you have the best sex of your life in your 40s? I've heard people say that about their 50s and indeed their 80s. So let's see.

What is the truth? What is happening out there or not, as the case may be? And how do you feel about your body? Again, that's when you can email the programme via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour, please. And if you didn't hear Friday's programme, it was about careers in music. So make sure you tell the people in your life who might be interested to listen to the podcast via BBC Sounds. Now, Samantha Power is here.

Really looking forward to talking to her, she said, coughing, spluttering. Good morning to you, Samantha. Rescue me. President Obama's ambassador to the UN between 2013 and 2017. And your book is out now. It's called The Education of an Idealist. Now, you are passionate, you've just been telling me, about getting this book into the hands of particularly young women. Now, why is that? Well, we're at a moment where things aren't going very well. I don't know if you've noticed. Yes, exactly. Well, it is my opinion. In America, and elsewhere, you're seeing, whether it's climate change, or mass migration, or in America, major issues with racial injustice

that are ongoing inequality, and after the effects of globalization, whatever your issue is, or the thing that ails you and irks you. I think people are really torn right now between two impulses. One is, oh, gosh, I really want to do something about it. This is horrible. And, but I'm only one person. And what can one person do? And that disempowerment feeling often swallows up that moment of activation where one thinks, OK, I've got to register. I've got to get others to register. I've got to go volunteer in my local school or I've got to go help a refugee resettle.

And so this book aims to meet people at that moment, that crossroads of, again, that empathy that gets triggered and then the self-doubt that creeps in pretty quickly. Well, you've done pretty well for yourself, as you'd be the first to acknowledge. You're not actually American, are you? You are Irish. Originally Irish, yes. Does that mean you can't be American president? It does. Okay, so that stops.

Something tells me that Donald Trump will not be the man to change the rules. To change that particular rule. So at the moment, that's not a possibility. But UN ambassador is not a bad, not a bad thing to have fulfilled already and tick that box. Very simply, because it's a long story yours. How did you get that role? Well, just going back a little bit further. I was Irish came to America when I was nine, not by myself, my mother brought me. There was no divorce in Ireland back then. And she wanted to go and run away and build a new life with my longtime stepfather now, also from Dublin. Moved to

Pittsburgh, became a big sports fan. That was my way of fitting in in America. And then when I was in college, had this amazing experience where in wanting to be a sports journalist when I grew up, I was taking notes on an American baseball game when the footage from Tiananmen Square came on the live CBS feed next to me to where I was taking notes just as a little intern. And that was the first time I had that feeling that I described earlier of just, whoa, that's horrible. Here are these young people rising up, just demanding freedom of speech, freedom association. There are tanks mowing them over. They're my age, these kids. Who's going to do something? How's, you know, that's horrible. What's going to happen? But it would have been

a heck of a leap for me as a late teenager to say, well, I'm one day I'm going to, you know, be in a position to be promoting human rights, the U.S. government. So long story short, not long thereafter, I graduated from college, went to Bosnia as a war correspondent. There were a lot of young people in their early 20s who did the same, just very drawn by the belief that after the wall had fallen, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Soviet Union had collapsed, that maybe there'd be hope for the United Nations, hope for a new world order. And while I was there, I was struck by actually how little the world was doing or how divided we were on the question of exactly what our role should be now that the Cold War was over, a sort of identity crisis in a way for Western democracies. And I covered the war for a couple years, then moved back to America, went to law school. And while I was in law school, began to explore the larger question of American responses to the major genocides since the Holocaust, including the Holocaust

and the Armenian genocide as well. Wrote a paper for a class, that paper kind of swelled, got bigger and bigger. And then I thought, well, I'll just try and do a book. And so I did a book. The book got published. And first term senator from Illinois, who had just been elected. Who was his name again? This fella, Barack Hussein Obama, read my book and invited me basically into his orbit. I worked with him in the Senate before he decided he was going to become a presidential candidate. I worked with him on his campaign.

And then when he became president, I became his human rights advisor. And then in his second term, his UN ambassador. So that's in a nutshell. Sorry about all that. I'm just exhausted hearing this. I'm exhausted. I don't know how the rest of the population feels. Let's cut to the chase and talk about some of the things that are quite difficult things, actually.

Famously, the red lines that President Assad crossed, that awful chemical attack on the population in Syria. And we were led to believe that this would be the point at which President Obama took action. He didn't or couldn't. What actually went wrong there? Yeah, well, one of the things I do in this book, in lieu of just passing judgment, which I'm fully capable of as well, but is to sort of bring readers into the Situation Room to really experience what that moment was like. I was actually in Ireland, I had just been named to be UN ambassador, but a pre-existing family trip was planned. And I had one of those dilemmas that every working mother has, which is work slash keep family commitment.

What do we do? And so I decided to go to Ireland knowing that for the next term of Obama, I'd be working all the time. And two days after arriving in the west of Ireland, I get word that Assad has gassed 1,400 people, including more than 400 children. And the, quote unquote, family vacation quickly gets subsumed in calling emergency meetings of the Security Council for more, especially after the war in Iraq. And, of course, was going to do so at that point with the United Kingdom and with France. We had only the three countries in a very, very small coalition of the willing. I mean, if you look back at George W. Bush's coalition of the willing, even that was more substantial than what was willing to stand up to Assad, which is a testament really to what the Iraq war I think did and one of the many legacies it left. But nonetheless, we were sort of ready to go.

I was UN ambassador. President Obama asked me to ensure that the weapons inspectors who were on the ground for the United Nations departed so that there'd be no risk of Assad taking them as human shields. The UN Secretary General said no and said, no, I'm going to leave them there. And in short, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. And wasn't it really, in truth, wasn't that the beginning of the end?

Well, it certainly was not good to have threatened to do something that you don't do. On the other hand, I don't know, looking back, that we can say that had this limited military operation been undertaken, that Syria would look wildly different today. It's a very complex situation. But it put a marker down, didn't it? Or rather, it didn't, because it didn't happen. Look, it was not a high point. Let's put it that way in our time in office. I think you're very honest about the prag... You just have to be pragmatic, don't you, in a job. For example, at the UN, these endless meetings. I think there's a great expression you use, everything's been said, but not everybody's said it.

And these meetings rumble on for hours on end with these, let's face it, a lot of hot air being exchanged. You have a fantastically interesting relationship with the Russian UN ambassador. Almost, I would hesitate to, well, you were friends, weren't you? There's a kind of slightly flirtatious element to your dealings. I don't know about that. But I wasn't there. We were, we were, look, in, again, right now, we're in this moment of geopolitical standoff, not enough diplomacy being done on any issue, certainly, at least by the United States.

At that time, that was when our relationship with Russia really took a turn for the worse. Russia invaded Ukraine, lopped off part of it in Crimea and tried to take part of eastern Ukraine, started bombing the living daylights out of Aleppo alongside the Syrian government. So the face of that aggression and all of the lies that accompanied it was the Russian ambassador.

He was the one defending those actions. He says he'll do anything for Russia accompanied it was the Russian ambassador. He was the one defending those actions. leave as a human being. And we're living now in this world of black and whites and gray areas are not as appealing to people or people seem to think that that's not how life is lived. Like life is lived in those gray areas. And I couldn't afford to walk away from a relationship with someone who holds a veto on the Security Council. If I want to prevent sexual violence in a peacekeeping mission in Congo, I need Russia to go along with it to send peacekeepers or to send human rights officers. And, you know, I couldn't walk away. But also, if I turn away and cease to be able to see the humanity of someone who represents even President Putin, where does that leave us as a society and a civilization, you have to keep looking for the

humanity even in someone who's what you want to strangle much of the time. Aung San Suu Kyi. Now, it's interesting to me that her portrait is actually in the reception of Old Broadcasting House here. I can't think of any other world leader who's... Yeah, it is. I've got time to show you a bit later. But you meet her and actually you say those things about her

that nobody else appears to be all that willing to say. Because the woman was a saint to all intents and purposes for quite some time. She was a saint to me, certainly. I went to meet her before the turn she's taken in recent years, or the public turn she's taken toward denying atrocities happening within her country. But when I met her, she was the lady who I kind of would have fantasized as a child, as a human rights icon who had shown such bravery and strength at such personal sacrifice. But I got a preview, I think, of what we've seen in the last couple years, which is President Obama sent me over there to get her to, in effect, embrace the idea of him becoming the first sitting president to visit Burma.

He and I, on his behalf, wanted to use the trip in order to extract more concessions from the Burmese military regime, basically to advantage pluralism and participatory democracy in Burma. But she disappointed you. She wanted no part of it. And she's entitled to her view and to think that our idea was a bad idea. But no, the crazy part was every time I opened my mouth, she would cut me off. She just wasn't, she didn't listen. She then raised the plight of the Rohingya who weren't yet being subjected to genocide. Minority Muslim population.

Minority Muslim who have subsequently been subjected to something bordering on genocide, if not genocide. At the time, they were subjected to horrible persecution. You couldn't marry or have children if you're Rohingya without getting the government's permission. And she basically said, that's all propaganda. It's not happening. What are your sources? I mean, it was just one of those, whoa,

like this wasn't the woman I expected to meet. Maybe she had a bad day. But not listening is about the worst quality you could have in a leader. And so I came back and I reported it to my president, but also my peers. And no one really wanted to hear it. We were still really hoping she would be, you know, the pathway to further liberalization in Burma. But it hasn't turned out that way.

I really I could talk to you for another couple of hours. There's so much good stuff in here and so much uncomfortable stuff that really made me think, actually. So I'm really a parent, about being a young person, believing that I can't make a difference, in part, because I want to open up the community that activates around the question of whether or not Trump will be president. If it's just elites talking to each other, and if we don't broaden that conversation and show the stakes of our foreign policy and of who leads America, we're going to end up in the same place. Thank you very much, Samantha Power, who was President Obama's UN ambassador. Thank you very much. Really good to meet you. The book is called The Education of an Idealist. Now, more than 200,000 women in England and Wales had an abortion last year. And we're about to start a new series about

abortion, not about the politics, but just about the personal experiences. So we asked the question, have you had an abortion? And how did you feel about it then? How do you feel about it now? Thanks to everybody who told us they were willing to talk about this. You're going to hear five different experiences, and they'll all be available via BBC Sounds. Today, Claire, not her real name,

who got pregnant in the 80s in rural Scotland. She was 17 at the time. In the 30 years since she's had an abortion, she hasn't really talked about it until now. She has a partner and a stepdaughter and lives what she calls a comfortable life with a lot of good friends. She met our reporter Henrietta Harrison in a park. I'd met somebody and we were becoming very close

and I wanted us to have a relationship and I thought about it really carefully because I was quite afraid and I did some research. I went and made an appointment, spoke to a nurse and was referred to one of the doctors who prescribed the contraceptive pill for me and I read everything faithfully and I took it faithfully and after a fairly short space of time I started to feel unwell and I worried that it was something to do with the pill or a reaction I was having. I had to go to the doctor in school time so I had to get a bus from my school into the local town and across town and then out to the doctor. He gave me what was I mean it looked like a yogurt pot it was ridiculous and in my school uniform I sort of

walked out across the waiting room which was full of people and it was the only way to get to the toilet so I had to walk in my school uniform with this yogurt pot thing which was quite clear what I was going to do and I came back with the yogurt pot full back through the waiting room and I just felt so humiliated he didn't say I want to do a pregnancy test but I was pretty sure that's what he was going to do. And I went back into the room and he sat down and basically dipped a piece of paper in it and then said, well, congratulations, you're pregnant. And I looked at him and I thought, I'm sitting here in my school uniform. And also he knew a bit about me because he was a family doctor, quite traditional.

And also the place I came from, you know, there were a few people who dropped out of my school because they became pregnant when they were 13, 14, 15. So maybe for him, the fact that I'd made it to almost 18 and was pregnant wasn't any big problem. I reached into the pocket of my school coat and I pulled out the packet and it was all bashed up because it had been hidden in a drawer and most of the pills had been taken and I gave it to him and he looked at it and he went oh god and he literally smacked his forehead with with the palm of his hand and said oh god I meant to give you the 30 milligram and I gave you the 20 milligram or something of that ilk and essentially he'd prescribed a dose which he knew wasn't going to protect me and then he

said that he said you know what that would never have protected you and I felt like saying oh well that's okay then and I'm sitting there thinking how can you possibly do that you're a doctor I asked you for the contraceptive pill because I wanted to have a safe relationship obviously it's not 100% safe but I didn't want to get pregnant and here I am with you congratulating me in my school uniform because I'm now pregnant. He knew that I was in the middle of my final exams and he knew that after the summer there would be university waiting for me presumably. What did you think your choices were? I mean I just couldn't I don't think I really could take it in and I just kept thinking how am I going to tell people oh my god and then he kind of rummaged about in his in his drawer and

his in tree and handed me a bundle of leaflets that said things like you know from your first baby and had pictures of people holding children up in the sunshine and looking delighted to you know some kind of local religious adoption service and then abortion services in in your area and and I just looked at this pile of leaflets and that was that was essentially it and he said I think you should have a read of these and And if you need to see me, you can make another appointment. And that was it. And he was already making notes in his file. And I just sort of picked up the stuff and sort of shoved it into my school bag and realised I had to make tracks to get back and get the bus home

so I could go home and pretend nothing had happened. And so I just felt so upset and so afraid and so angry and so worried because I thought am I going to have a child and in our family very negative terms were used about young mothers and unmarried mothers you know terms that you just couldn't hear nowadays like gym slip mothers and trollops and things you just I mean even at the time I found it appalling you know I I was just I just felt so broken by it all I felt really broken by it because I didn't know how I was going to deal with it how I was going to tell people what would happen if people guessed because I kept thinking I must look different I kept thinking

you know I must have a belly that's showing even though that's ridiculous because I just couldn't imagine what was going to happen I couldn't imagine and I was just in a state of terror and at the same time worried about not getting back from school on time which is ridiculous you know so you had the three leaflets I mean did you in any way consider having the child having the child adopted you'd got these three options I thought about it for a really short space of time and I tried to imagine myself with a child I tried to imagine myself living independently and I realized that that wasn't going to happen because I couldn't imagine it and also my partner was was great and I really liked him but I I didn't think there was going to be any major long-term future in it.

I really liked him, but I couldn't imagine him pushing a pram and us living together. That wasn't an option. And the idea of a child that was then going to be given up for adoption just wasn't, I mean, that just wasn't going to happen either. I couldn't imagine my parents' faces as they walked about with their pregnant daughter, you know, because my mother would have died of humiliation.

My father would have been so ashamed and everybody would have talked about it, you know. Not that that maybe bothered me, but I knew how much of an effect it would have on my parents. You decided to have an abortion. How did that procedure then come about i did some more digging and discovered that there was a well woman service that i could visit so discussed the possibility of abortion uh very soon afterwards within uh you know less than a week because i knew that's what

i wanted and the nurse there was really helpful and supportive and she spoke to me about other options just to be sure that i was sure about what I was doing. So she kind of went away and came back and she gave me an appointment card with a handwritten note of the time and the place. Gave me a date about 10 days after that. And so I went home, hid the appointment card and worked out that day what I had to do and make sure that I could get there and back again on the school bus essentially so I was in my school uniform sitting on the bus clutching my bag full of jotters and it's like somebody else's life and I went to the outpatients department and pushed the door open and there were lots of people sitting about and there were one or two people who looked like they

were in quite steady relationships and very upset about what was happening. There were a few people who looked not dissimilar to my age. Nobody had a school uniform on. There were a couple of mothers wringing their hands beside girls. And there were one or two people with partners who just didn't look at each other and didn't look at anyone else in the room. And I just felt this collective sadness, this collective humiliation, this sort of sense of doom and sense of kind of tragedy about the whole thing. I'm really the sort of person who goes into a waiting room and cracks a joke

or says something or makes a cheeky comment. That's the way I've always been. I probably get it from my father. But I always do that and this was the only time that I just knew there was nothing to be said. Absolutely nothing to be said absolutely nothing to be said and I I sat there looking at the ground and uh sort of you know counting the drawing pins and the pictures and then they called me through and uh the procedure was done and and it was it was much quicker than I thought it was much less painful than I thought but I'd been given a local anaesthetic and then I was kind of helped out and given paper towels and paper pants and everything kind of rustled and the nurse who

had been looking after me when she brought me in came back and she saw that I was looking a bit wobbly and she gave me a hug and she said you know it'll all be better soon love it'll all be better soon and she gave me a massive hug and she was lovely. And I think about it now. I think about it now and think about her saying, it'll all be better soon. And I think I'm so much older. I'm so much braver. I'm so much stronger.

But yet it just makes me feel so awful because I feel ashamed of the way I ought to feel about it, but I knew it was the only thing I could do. It was the only thing I could do and I couldn't possibly have had that child. I couldn't possibly have. It's extraordinary to think that this happened to you 30 years ago and you talk about it as clearly as it happened yesterday yeah the memory is is is so clear and it it's one of a lot of different memories that I have in my life that that I can press a button in my head and they come back like a movie and it's not worn out because it's an old video

cassette it's just so clear I remember every moment of that I remember every moment of it and I remember the sensation as I got on the bus and I had these enormous pads in my pants which just felt like a nappy and I sat on the bus thinking everybody must know everybody must know that I'm sure they're all looking at me and I didn't look at them I looked at the ground I looked out the window I looked everywhere but around me because I was I was convinced that people were looking at me. I'm sure nobody was. I'm certain nobody was. But I just had this feeling that people must be looking at me and thinking, for God's sake, look at her. How shameful. I'd asked the nurse if it was possible to get an appointment, you know,

late morning, early afternoon so that I could get back. Because I said to her, I literally said, I have to get home. I have to get home on, you know, late morning, early afternoon, so that I could get back. Because I said to her, I literally said, I have to get home, I have to get home on the school bus. She said, it's OK, darling, I understand. And she made sure that happened. So I got on the bus in the morning, got off at school, walked to the bus station, went to hospital, had the abortion, got back on the bus, got back to school,

and then got on the school bus as if nothing had happened. You didn't tell anyone. You didn't tell a friend, you didn't tell a partner, you didn't tell a parent. Do you know why that was? It's a hard question to answer. Why didn't I tell people? I didn't know what to say.

I thought that people would judge me I probably still do, I do that's probably why I haven't spoken about it until now in fact I mentioned this to one of my very very close friends recently and she said well I didn't know about that but you've told me now and she kind of laughed and said

that's really funny because you're so open about many other things and I think maybe that just by not telling people it just shut it down and it made it almost not happen in a way and also because my mind was so fixed on going to university because I knew that was what was expected of me and I knew that you know plan b was not not an option in any way shape or form whether that was adoption having it you know whatever it might be it was just pressing the stop button on a situation which should never have happened. I can understand in a way that not telling anyone at the time made it simpler, but not having told anyone in the last 30 years, I find that harder to understand. Can you explain why you've really not told anyone since?

I think, yeah, I think it's fear of judgment. And I think now, you know I'm in my mid-40s I live quite a comfortable middle class existence I've got lots of friends who some of whom have children some of whom don't have children and would desperately like to have children some of whom have been through IVF and the idea of being the middle class woman who actually took the life of a child as some people look at it you know they they look at it that way and think my god well you don't deserve to have children and I I shouldn't I shouldn't care about that I shouldn't think that that's an important thing I shouldn't I shouldn't want to be bothered about

that but the people that I would be speaking to about it are the same people that were my peers at the time who probably would have thought the same things about women who were you know sleeping around or trying to get a council house or whatever their thoughts about teenage pregnancies were so that's probably why I haven't spoken about it. One of the things you said to me on the phone which I found astonishing is that you find it easier to tell people about childhood abuse than you do the abortion that you had at 18 and why do you think that is it's a strange thing I mean at the time I couldn't talk about it because I didn't have the vocabulary I didn't have the the lexicon that let me describe

what was going on and also maybe it's one of these things that people feel that it's okay to be a victim but it's not okay to have made an unborn child a victim, which is a ridiculous thing to say, but maybe that's what it is. But it's taken you 30 years to be able to talk about it. It has. Yeah, it has taken me 30 years, and I'm glad I'm speaking about it now. I really wish I'd spoken about it a long time ago. I just... It's kind of a bone of contention that I have with myself.

I'm so angry with myself for not speaking about it and feeling ashamed of something that really there's no shame in it. Pro-life campaigners would say that you've ended a life, that what you've done is wicked, that the unborn child has rights. How do you respond to that?

I understand that. I understand people's feelings about the unborn child, the foetus. I understand that completely. And I know that it can be a very controversial choice. But I think that ultimately a woman's body is her own body. Now, if that decision can be made with the partner, that's fine. If the decision has to be made by the woman, ultimately it's the woman who carries the child.

It's about us making decisions about ourselves, about our future and about our bodies. But in any case, I feel that I made a decision about myself. I made a decision about my body. And that was the most important thing for me. I feel kind of ashamed because I grew up with a very strongly feminist mother, grew up with a lot of intelligent people around me. So the fact that I couldn't speak about something which is such a fundamentally important issue for for

all women I feel quite ashamed of that but not about what I did I feel ashamed of not speaking so I'm proud and I hope we have really moved on you were certain at the time that you made the right decision 30 years on do you still think you made the right decision? 30 years on I am absolutely 100% sure that I made the right decision because a girl who was I was friends with at the time phoned me up a few weeks after my abortion which she didn't know about and she phoned me to tell me that she was in hospital and she was having an abortion and she was pregnant to who was by that point my ex and so I feel like I absolutely made the right decision. Yes, I did.

That was the voice of a woman we are calling Claire. And she was talking to our reporter, Henrietta Harrison. And we'll hear from a woman we've given the name Amanda, who will be on the programme tomorrow. And she felt pressurised into having an abortion and it took her 25 years to come to terms with it. So that's the experience you'll hear on the programme tomorrow. Quite a lot of reaction to hearing what Claire said today.

Sarah, listening to Claire's story about her abortion 30 years ago has moved me to tears, so eloquent, about the awful, unnecessary shame she felt. Anonymous says, I'm a married woman, I'm in my 50s. I've got four teenagers. I got pregnant by accident in my 20s with a boyfriend who I knew was never going to be my life partner. I knew I didn't want to have a baby with him and we split up after I'd had the abortion. My life would have been completely different if I hadn't had it. I have no shame about it and I've never felt upset, only relieved. I've never told anyone as I don't want to be judged for a decision which affected only me and my body and my future life.

I feel angry on behalf of other women who are made to feel shame for having an abortion by society or by the atmosphere of clinics that they find themselves in. From Catherine, your interviewer said pro-life campaigners would say a woman is wicked. Well, that's not something I've ever said or would ever say. As a volunteer for a crisis pregnancy service, we're there to help the women make her decision, to care for her and support her. If she has the abortion and does have problems, we also offer counselling afterwards. As Christians, we are there to love and never to condemn. And from Carol, I thought that was a moving and honest account from Claire.

We shouldn't live in a country where a woman still finds it difficult to talk about having an abortion. There is and should be no shame in it. Thank you to everybody who expressed a view. And as I say, more stories, more real life experiences tomorrow. We hear from Amanda and then there'll be another experience later this week and then to next week as well. Now, Helen Mirren, Dame Helen Mirren, was on the programme. I think the reason I was in such a good mood talking to Helen was that these interviews are always done in a kind of really weird sort of processional way in a glitzy hotel the kind of hotel I never normally enter I should say but um they are these film companies take over vast sections of hotels and interviews just happen in various different rooms tv interviews and all the rest of it and Helen came

to us after quite a high high octane kind of encounter with MTV so she was really quite relieved to be able to sit down with a nice lady well that wasn't me I was there as well but I had a colleague with me who is nice and I think she was quite relieved to be in our company plus I was in a good mood because there was good food on offer at this hotel free provided I should say not by the BBC but by the film people and it included for the first time ever in my experience, chips. So the whole thing got off to a good start and it was lovely to talk to her. And Anonymous says,

so pleased to hear Helen Mirren shining a light on the lack of value placed on the skill of dressmaking. I emailed some months ago on this subject. Is tailoring mainly by men perceived as more highly regarded and valued than dressmaking mainly by women? It would appear so. And from Stephanie, Helen touched on something that is currently a very sore subject with me. The fact that women's work is so undervalued compared to men.

I swear I don't write these emails myself. They genuinely come into the programme. Stephanie goes on. I am a wedding cake maker i do it to earn a living it isn't a hobby my cakes involve many many hours of work and many have complicated intricate decoration i usually find that i have worked for considerably less than the minimum wage but my clients do not wish to pay more my husband is a carpenter. His day rate is a minimum of four times what I earn for my work. And he doesn't have to work through the night to meet deadlines. After a long and very

busy season, I feel really demoralised. Stephanie, please don't feel demoralised because I understand there is a fantastic skill set attached to what you do. You are clearly very, very gifted. But what can I say? I share your frustration at the way that women's work is undervalued. Thank you very much for sending that email. And join us tomorrow for another Woman's Hour. Here's a question. A man escapes from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships.

He's risked everything to do it. But once he's free, he digs a hole and he tunnels straight back in again. Why? Find out in Tunnel 29, a new 10-part podcast series from BBC Radio 4 with me, Helena Merriman. To subscribe, search for Intrigue Tunnel 29 on BBC Sounds. 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 was 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.