Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: The law on abortion, Aparna Sen, Being lesbian in the military

Episode Date: July 2, 2022

The overturning by the US Supreme Court of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling has prompted many of you to get in touch to share your reactions and experiences. But what does the law in the UK say about a woman’s right to an abortion? We hear from Professor Fiona De Londras, the Chair of Global Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School.Aparna Sen is one of India's best loved and most successful film directors. Her career has spanned 40 years and she's explored issues around mental health, sexual abuse and infidelity. Aparna is in England for the London Indian Film Festival.Have you ever noticed the queue for the women’s toilets is much longer than the queue for the men’s? Two Bristol university graduates have tried to resolve this issue, by inventing female urinals. They joined Emma to explain how it works.How do you heal and get through a break up? Annie Lord is Vogue’s dating columnist. She joins Emma Barnett to talk about her debut book, Notes on Heartbreak. A candid exploration of the best and worst of love, she talks about nursing a broken heart and her own attempts to move on in the current dating climate; from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex’s new girlfriend and the sharp indignity of being ghosted.Welsh singer and dancer Marged Siôn is with us. She's in the band, Self Esteem and appears in a new Welsh-language short film called Hunan Hyder which means self-confidence). She talks to us about trauma, healing and appearing on stage with Adele!Dame Kelly Holmes came out as a lesbian last week. The Olympic champion served in the army in the late 1980s, when you could face prison for being gay as a member of the military. Dame Kelly spoke of her worry that she would still face consequences if she were to let her sexuality be known. It wasn’t until 2000 that a ban on being gay and serving in the Army, Navy or RAF was lifted. Emma Riley was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1993 for being a lesbian.An American pregnant woman who was on holiday in Malta this month couldn't get an induced medical miscarriage when she needed it because of the country's strict abortion laws. Andrea Prudente ended up going to Mallorca to get treatment, where she’s recovering in a hotel.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Jessica Crichton. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. So coming up, we'll hear from Aparna Sen, one of the best loved and most successful female directors in Indian cinema. Plus, are you sick and tired of the long queues in female public bathrooms? Well, two university graduates may have found a groundbreaking solution. But first, the landmark decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade, which is the constitutional right to abortion nationwide, had led to debates on reproductive rights around the world. But how much do you know about what the law says on abortion here in the UK?

And is there any chance that the law might change? Well, earlier this week, Emma spoke to Professor Fiona de Londras, who is the Chair of Global Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School, to drill down on some of the facts. So under the Abortion Act of 1967, which is what applies through most of the UK, there is no right to abortion. Instead, abortion is a crime. And what the Act does is it outlines the situations in which somebody may avail of abortion and provide abortion without committing a criminal offence. In Northern Ireland, it's a little bit different. Abortion has been decriminalised in recent years. But in fact, there is almost no access to abortion in Northern Ireland because the services have not been commissioned. And that's something that is ongoing at present.

So the law is more up to date, but the provision is not in the sense of, we talked about this actually very recently to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, who was at that point when we were talking in Northern Ireland, trying to, who was at that point when we were talking in Northern Ireland trying to sort this out amongst other things. Does it matter that the law is written in that way, that it hasn't been updated in terms of practice? So I think it does. You know, in terms

of practice, the first thing to say is that an act like the Abortion Act imposes lots of burdensome procedural requirements on doctors in order to prove that they're not committing a crime. So two doctors having to certify, for example, that this level of risk that is required by the law to access abortion up to 24 weeks exists, even though it always exists because of the way that the law is written. It also, I think, matters for people who are seeking abortion in at least two ways. The first way is that when abortion is criminalised, that means abortion is exceptionalised and stigmatised. In other words, it is not treated within the law as an ordinary part of healthcare, which of course is what it is. And the second way it matters is that if people, for whatever reason, are not able to access abortion through formal legal systems,

maybe they are living in situations, of course, of control and not being allowed to access a doctor, or they live remotely where there are no providers. If they make the decision to self-manage abortion with pills that they source unlawfully, even though they're safe, they are committing a serious crime. And they may have some reluctance, for example, in seeking post-abortion care, even though they're not likely to be reported or anything, unlike they were in Northern Ireland previously. So, you know, there are practical reasons and then there are symbolic and I guess normative reasons why this very old fashioned way of regulating abortion is not rights based or doesn't

maximise health outcomes. There has been prior to the Roe v Wade decision, the overturning of it, there had been a campaign to update it because of the reasons that you outlined, which hadn't gathered much steam in some ways. I mean, I knew about it, we've reported on it, but it wasn't sort of headline news. Perhaps it will be now in light of this because people are considering the fragility and the security, or they want to debate. Something slightly separate, which I wanted to clarify with you, if I may, is this idea that there, for instance, from the Labour MP Stella Creasy, that there needs to be an amendment to the government's forthcoming Bill of Rights.

So Dominic Raab said the government wouldn't be backing the amendment. Can you explain what that amendment would mean on top of any potential changes or no changes to the Act? Yes. So my understanding of what Stella Creasy is proposing is that there would be an amendment to the Bill of Rights, which establishes and makes clear that access to abortion is a right. So at the moment, it's not a right in most of the United Kingdom. What difference would it make to say abortion is a right? Well, first of all, it would potentially put a limit on any future attempts to roll back on abortion access in the United Kingdom. So, you know, there have been attempts to reduce the gestational age limit

and to impose particular consent requirements and so on. So, you know, all change to abortion law is not necessarily progressive. So one idea is that a right might put some limits or make it difficult to regress on that. And the other is that if a case were to come before a court about an attempt to access abortion, that the court would see access to abortion as a right and start from that perspective. So I think that that is part of the motivation here. Yes, and thank you for explaining that. But I wonder, do you agree with Dominic Raab when he says, I mean, he has a legal background, he's the Justice Secretary, it could mean abortion if this change was made, if this amendment came in, could end up

being litigated in the courts if it was in this bill? Is that your understanding? I mean, abortion can be litigated in the courts already. Women in Northern Ireland and pregnant people in Northern Ireland secured their change largely through litigation, as well as political pressure in UK courts. In addition, you could challenge the lawfulness of the Abortion Act already by saying that it wasn't sufficient to give effect to rights. Would this add to it, do you think? I don't think it would necessarily add to or detract from it. Then is it pointless? I mean, someone will be saying this is potential posturing from MPs, Labour MPs in this country,

when our rights or our connection to access to such parts of healthcare, as you describe it, is not under threat? So I don't think it would be pointless per se, because I think it is important to try to change the orientation of a conversation about abortion from one that is about regulating something that's generally not permitted, so regulating it as an exception, to acknowledging it as something that women have a right to access and thus creating a system around it that is oriented towards securing that access. So ultimately, with your knowledge of law, you would support both a rewrite of the Act from 67 of the Abortion Act and this amendment?

So I think I would support any kind of legislative change that made access to abortion more secure and put it on a rights-based footing. That was Professor Fiona de Londras from the Birmingham Law School. Now Aparna Sen is one of the most successful female directors in Bengali cinema. She's won countless awards during her 40 year career and has broken down barriers by exploring issues such as mental health, sexual abuse and female desire in her work. Aparna is in England to debut her latest film at the London Indian Film Festival this week and when I spoke to Aparna yesterday I started by asking what she thinks the secret is to her longevity in film. I don't think I've made that many films in 40 years, but each film that I made took time and a lot of thought, a lot of my lived experience, that went into it. And so I suppose people just found some truth in what I had to say. Yeah, I sense as well that when you make a film, for example, the latest film,

The Rapist, which will come to you shortly, explores some very important societal issues. Is that something that you always seek to do? Explore taboo or thought-provoking subjects? I don't consciously do that. I don't think I consciously do that. What happens is when things happen in society, when things happen around me, they affect me. And I don't immediately, I don't always make a film about things that affect me, but some things that affect me start a kind of series of images in my mind. And that's when I know that it is crying out to be a film. So I've been thinking about a lot of rape that's been happening in our country lately.

A lot of rape. It's always been there, but now it sort of gets publicized. But apart from the fact that rape is about power and not sex, apart is very, very deeply ensconced, and it's very difficult to get rid of it. And it's there everywhere, not only in slums, not only in, you know, middle-class society, not only in affluent societies. It's there everywhere. Even places that we consider kind of sacrosanct, like universities and so on.

It's there. So I think that's what finally, you know, leads to establishing male superiority over female helplessness. And these are the issues that you have chosen to speak about. Now, you also sit on the jury for various film festivals, both in India and internationally. So you see a lot of the films that are being made. Are you happy with what you're seeing from the next generation of female directors around the world? Are they exploring similar issues to you?

Would you want them to explore similar issues? Oh, yes. I can think of two people right away. I mean, for instance, Nandita Das in Firak. She looked at the Gujarat riots. And then again in Manto, she looked at what Manto went through, you know, his kind of lived experiences that led to his stories. Then there's my daughter, Konkuna Sainsharma, who just made a brilliant film called Death in the Gunge, where she explores toxic masculinity. And the central character is a man, but he's vulnerable, he's gentle. And these are not, you know, these are not virtues, so-called, quote-unquote, female virtues like gentleness, kindness and so on, that are not celebrated, that are not, you know, exalted in our society at all.

How has representation for women in Indian film changed over the years, do you think? Oh, a lot, I think. For the better? For the better, do you think? Oh, a lot, I think. For the better? For the better, yes. When I first started making films, you know, there were very few. There was Vijay Mehta and there was Sai Paranjpe,

who were very good directors, but they didn't make that many films, you know. Then I was there. I was also fairly sort of taking my time over making films. Then now there's been a kind of explosion. Earlier, you had to scratch your head and think,

well, who apart from Aparna Sen, Vijay Mehta and Sai Paranchpe, then, you know, then there were a lot of them making films. Now there's Konkona, there's Nandita, there's Geetu Mohandas, there's Seema Power, there's Alankrita Srivastava. I mean, one could just rattle off. I mean, I checked the other day on Google and I found about 150 to 200 names. And what was that? How short would that list have been when you first became a director? Well, about, I don't know, about five.

Wow. So there's definitely been an improvement there, which is fantastic. And also there are producers who are women, a lot of actors, female actors turn producers or directors. They've had exposure to the medium throughout their careers. And so it's easy for them to understand what it takes. Now, you mentioned power already at the beginning of this interview, and that's a big part of your latest film, The the screen. So visually, the power structure was that the girl who's raped, Naina, she's on the ground, you know, and the rapist is kind of tarring above her. Then later on, when she meets the rapist in prison, the power dynamics have changed visually as well, because then the rapist is kind of thrown on the floor by the guard who brings him in.

And Naina, who's come to interview him, is standing or sitting at a chair. And then gradually, as they begin to understand each other, they start coming, you know, a sort of, I wouldn't say bond is too strong a word, but something begins to form between them, some sort of understanding. Then, you know, you have them both sitting at the table and that's when they're more equal. And the funny thing is, and that I don't know how feminists will take this, though I'm a feminist myself, is that the woman, Naina, she begins without knowing to enjoy her power over this man.

So power is something that really doesn't differentiate between genders. A woman in power can be as cruel as a man in power. As a female director, when you're recording a rape scene like that, how important was it for you to get that right? Is there a way you can get it right? Well, I don't know. Getting it right, I mean, what is right? Exactly.

So what I did was, I don't like explicit violence or explicit anything. It was suggested more than anything else in my film. And also it was from, often from the victim's point of view, like when she's being dragged on the ground. And you don't show it in one continuous scene as well. No, I don't. I keep breaking up the rape scene, you see. And what she sees, for instance,

is the moon through the branches of the tree above her, which is a strange thing to see. But I've seen that, you know, this kind of thing has a tremendous effect. In fact, in a film that I made called Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, there later on in the morning, next morning, his dentures are lying on the ground. So there was a collective gasp from the audience, you know, because they sort of were shocked at this. That was film director and producer Aparna Sen. Her new movie is called The Rapist. Now, I'm sure you know from experience that the queue for the women's toilets is almost always longer than the queue for the men's. Well, two Bristol University graduates might have just helped us out here, ladies. They've invented female urinals for festivals and large events. They recently brought their invention to two locations at Glastonbury, and now they hope to expand even further. Well, on Tuesday, Emma spoke to the creators of Pequil,

Amber Probin and Hazel McShane. Here's Amber. We're absolutely obsessed with obliterating the women's toilet queue. We are fed up of waiting in line whilst men can whiz in and out of the urinals. So Pequil is a solution for that wait and for that inequality. And how does it work? Can you describe it it i've had a look at this online yeah sure so there's a few key elements to it so firstly the pedestal which is what you actually wee into this is shaped like a boat built up of complex curves to minimize splashback which you squat over yeah we're absolutely obsessed with

not having any splashback or what in many different ways we want to obsessed with not having any splashback we all squat in many different ways we want to make sure no one gets splashback um and then also it's the structure itself is semi-private so you don't have to touch anything you walk around these overlapping screens but you have the wedge to kind of keep yourself fully private and you've been trying this at Glastonbury how's it been going yes it's been amazing women have absolutely loved it we had so much good feedback literally after every woman has come out of the toilets women have said we need this more we want this everywhere because at Glastonbury we were at two locations the pyramid stage and stone circle and women were just absolutely loving it the stone

circles open 24 7 and women were just going in it. The Stone Circle was open 24-7 and women were just going in, crossing the site just to get to that location because they knew they would have to touch it. Is it a case of, in terms of reducing the queue, away from the functionality for a moment, is it a case of you've got more of them, which is often the issue, there's only two women's toilets, for instance, in a theatre or a cinema, or is it to do with the functionality that makes the queue shorter?

It's a bit of both. So this is definitely an increase in access to facilities, but it's also our design is made to eliminate micro time wasters. So traditional toilets have like opening and closing of the door, clean the seat that you're about to sit on, awkwardly hover over something, maybe check your phone because you're in a private space and all these micro time wasters slow down the process of going to the

toilet whereas our design is like thought about all those different micro time wasters and eliminated them so instead of a door there's an overlapping screen that you walk around which is still really private but you don't have that time waster it's a squat job so you basically don't have to touch things you have to clean anything down and it's because it's semi-private it means that women have that incentive to get in get out and go so women aren't hanging around looking at their phone any attacks things when you add them all up it is a massive time you're very polite the way you're describing that micro time wasters or because of course you know i'm just a big fan of the deep sign saying aloud at some points what are they doing in there and obviously i know i don't

actually do that but you know you do that when you're stressed because you need a wee and you need to go you want to get back to whatever you're doing but then of course there will be others listening saying it takes me time and you know depending on if you are having a period it takes me a lot longer in there so you never know what's going on in there i've got to get i'm never i'm never you know knowingly uh underserving the audience i hope through my attention to detail can you is it just for we it's just for we yeah we're interested because 90 of women in the queue just need to wait okay we're thinking those people in and out back on with a day and then those that do need to use a kind of cubicle can right so. So it's just for me. And then in terms of squatting, again, I want to get into this.

Some people find it hard to squat. What's your feedback been on that? Yes. So when we started looking at the research behind this, we realised that there were three different common squat heights. So there was a wide squat, a high squat and a low squat. And we tested this going to like Wetherspoons toilets talking to women at lots of different parties standing in queues for clubs or in the street and we actually found that this this design would accommodate all those different squat heights but we've also

we tested actually with my mum first of all so you know when she squatted down she was like I definitely need something to hold on to so we have got hand rails if you need that to pull yourself up with and also that when you squat down your heels slightly come up and get off the floor and that may instabilize you so we put the floor slightly slanted just so you have that extra support so there's lots of different changes to help help women feel more comfortable when using the design are you hoping this is going to go indoors, not just at festivals? That's it. So every time people gather, women end up waiting in line for the loop.

We've started at festivals here at Glastonbury, running events, but also thinking about universities, schools, shopping malls, airports. We want no women to ever have to wait in line. So we have big, big plans for our future. I'm looking forward to it. This is the beginning, okay? This is what you're banking on at the moment i'm not and you've got other work to do i have to tell you as inventors because we've got all these ideas coming in

for other things i mean while we're talking d said i'd like to invent a good device to automatically shut down mansplaining so i don't know if that's the next thing that you're can work on are you still at glastonbury perhaps you've got a few hours yeah we're 12 days into being at glastonbury right now in the middle of a field so yeah it's been an amazing experience amber probin and hazel mcshane inventors of the peak wall which might be coming to an event near you very shortly i would certainly use it now let me ask you a question how do you get through a breakup how do you heal yourself Someone who talks candidly about nursing a broken heart and her own attempts to move on in the current dating climate is Vogue's popular dating columnist Annie Lord. Now, Annie has just

released her debut book Notes on Heartbreak. It's a memoir about the disintegration of a five-year long relationship and its aftermath. When Emma spoke to Annie, she started by asking why she wanted to write about her dating experiences in the first place. So I sort of charted what happened with the breakup, which was, I went to dinner with my dad and brother, and then it felt like completely out of nowhere, my boyfriend sort of pulled me to the side outside King's Cross and ended our relationship. And to be to be honest in retrospect I don't think it was out of nowhere I think I was like completely in denial about a lot of problems we had but um yeah I mean I wrote the article I think I was couldn't really have written anything else that was all I could think about at that time um and I think part of me when I started writing it was

maybe like wanting to write something super beautiful and captivating that would make him really miss me or whatever and then I think as time went on it just you know writing about the breakup kind of was like a diary and sort of was helping me come to terms with what happened and my feelings and things like that if if someone's going through it right now what would you say if a woman's listening um I'd say like I sometimes say to friends that go through breakups like you will probably feel really bad for like a year but I think in that year you'll have like really happy days as well it's not like the whole year is terrible it's just like a lot of the times you're going to feel lower than others but I look back at the summer after

we broke up and like I behaved so messy a lot of the time but part of that was like really funny I've got really fond memories of loads of silly things I did when I was like in that low place and you because you do talk about heartbreak is grief you know proper grief do you think we we take it seriously enough no like I I remember when it happened and sort of looking around at people walking down the road and thinking what this is like what all of you were going through like I couldn't believe it was an experience that everyone goes through in their life because it just felt so bad to me I felt like oh no I must be going through it worse sort of thing yeah and um and like it was I found it really difficult as well like you know I sort of wanted to read books or watch films

that really captured what I was going through. And I just found that they were very like, come on, girl, get up, you can do it. You'll be fine without him sort of thing. And nothing seemed to dwell in it as much as I wanted it to. Yeah, and you do like with some of the other experiences as well, but I think particularly with Heartbreak, you think, why is the world still spinning why are you still walking along doing your thing and

I am here in this pit of of despair I mean you are someone people are turning to for advice and the climate now within which to date is is constantly changing and keeps changing especially with of course the rise of apps and and you know, conversations happening digitally, and the way that people share pictures, and then also the way that people just disappear. And I know that you've looked at this, why men, some men ghost women, and where have you come to with the conclusion on that? I know you've written about it, and it's also in the book. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of factors. I think dating apps make it a lot easier, because there's no sort of accountability. So, you know, if you meet someone on an app and then you decide to just stop messaging them,

it's quite easy because there's not going to be any mutual friends around being like, oh, they're calling you out on your behavior and things like that. I think this app also means there's so many more options for different people. So after like three dates, it's quite easy to get bored. Not bored, but see someone else somewhere else and think oh I'll just try that and nothing really like sticks um and one of my friends always says that men have um a lot less like object permanence than women which I didn't know what it meant but I asked her and she was saying that it's like forgetting that when you can't see something forgetting it's there and I And I feel like that's kind of true.

Like I'll be on a date and I'll, you know, be talking to a guy and it feels like they're so into you and they're like, oh, like, do you want to go out on the weekend? And I've not felt like this in a while. And then it's like, as soon as you're off the date, the texts just like filter away and it just becomes, sort of goes into nothing again. It is really exhausting.

Yes. And, you know, it's exhausting trying to come up with the messages when you're not on the date to see if you can get another day or they want another day and all the different uh psychology linked to that i mean you've said you're unlucky with men uh with you know how you are in your personal life i know you share that as well and of course this is a this is the driving force of the book do you still feel like that now you've given it good thought and try to advise others it's weird I think sometimes I'm it's so much easier to focus on when you've been rejected not when you reject other people because I remember recently I think I was moaning about like not

finding anyone I liked and or something and my friend was like what about that guy you met at the gig and then what about that friend you got with and then you are like I think I I keep moaning about this stuff to do with apps and how it makes people disposable, but I'm probably a massive part of that as well. That was a dating columnist and author Annie Lord. Still to come on the programme, following the news of a new government review into the treatment of LGBT military veterans, we hear from one woman who was kicked out of the Royal Navy for being gay and the long-term impact that it's had on her. And remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour,

any time of the day if you can't join us live Monday to Friday. Just go to the Woman's Hour website to find the free daily podcast. Now onto some music. The pop group Self Esteem will be supporting Adele tonight at Hyde Park in London, and you might have seen them performing at Glastonbury last weekend as well. The group are all women and sing about female empowerment and confidence, topics close to the heart of one of their members, Margit Sean.

Margit features in a new Welsh-language film which aired this week called Hínan Hadea, which means self-confidence. The film follows Margit as she discusses trauma, addiction, recovery, and also sisterhood. And when I spoke to Margaret yesterday, I started by asking if she still gets those pre-stage nerves before performing live in front of an audience. I think I do get nervous. I kind of try and channel it into anger a bit more now.

Like I think before Glastonbury, I was sort of like jumping around, like throwing my fist in the air and just being like,'s get it um so yeah it's good I think like I've had like a good amount of years of experience now to sort of know how to channel those nerves yeah and as I mentioned um you were featured in in a film that's airing this week and I think I got a sense of that vibe that energy that you bring on stage is absolutely fantastic I really appreciate you coming on today to talk about something so personal. And I'd like to touch on that because as the documentary, as you talk about, and as you discuss in this documentary,

you were raped when you were 21. You're going to be 30 in two weeks time. So why have you chosen to talk about this? Something so horrifying now? I think it's, I think to be honest, I've always been quite open about my, the rape that I endured. And I think, but I always wanted to put all of these processes sort of in one creative outlet. You know, when I think that two years, well, I think it's two and

a bit years ago now, when I was 27, I kind of had a nervous breakdown and I was sent into recovery for addiction issues. And the last two years of my life have been just so transformative in terms of where I am, in terms of my healing. And I think that I just had this this want and this need to put it into a creative place and that working with Carys Hughes and Cassie Wynne on this film um you know Welsh women that I've been friends with since I mean Carys since I was born really um and Cassie since my my teenagers it just felt um it was a really organic um it was a really organic process where it just sort of happened it wasn't necessarily um something that I planned um but I just knew that I wanted to do it in some format. And this was the format that it that it turned out to be. And you mentioned there that in the last two years, your life has really transformed.

What was it about this last two years that has really helped in that healing process? I think I think time and slowing the pace down for me was was really important. I think as a performer and a creative person I think that I'm always sort of searching or like seeking there's a sense of urgency you know you feel like um this has to happen now and um and you're sort of always chasing something um not maybe quite sure what that thing you're chasing is and um you know I got sober a week before lockdown um and I'm not saying that lockdown happened because of me and my recovery, but it definitely helped, you know, for everything to shut down and not just, you know, your normal stuff like the pubs and stuff, but just even the creative industry. And I was able to just take stock and just really put that time and energy into myself. And how much has performing helped with that healing process?

I got a sense that in the film, whilst you do talk about trauma and you talk about sexual assault, there's also an undeniable sense that you are on a journey of self-discovery and you're also recovering. Yeah, I mean, it's just for me that whole process and... Could you repeat the question say that again sorry sorry what was that margaret did you just repeat the question yeah i i say that you you clearly found some solace in performing has that helped you through the healing process because whilst the documentary that you made was about sexual assault it was about the trauma you've experienced um you're also clearly going through a journey of self-discovery and recovery as well

aren't you yeah I think sorry yeah that's right I think the performance stuff for me I mean it's always been a place of solace I think growing up was the place that I felt um most myself even through nerves and even through like I struggled with stage fight when I was growing up and um but you know it's always been a place where I feel um that I'm able to just be myself um and to show all sides and you know the the dynamics of who I am um and not feel um that I have to apologize for that um because maybe in day-to-day you sort of you feel like you have to apologise for that. Because maybe in day to day, you sort of, you feel like you have to apologise maybe a bit more than what you would if it was a choreographed set where you know exactly where to bring the emotion and where to put it, if that makes sense. It does.

There was a really interesting part of the film where you say, if you behaved on stage, if you behaved like that in life, you wouldn't feel safe behaving that way performing that way why is that I think I mean the first thing that I think about there's there's a lot of things I could answer that but I mean even just the anger stuff and the the sort of the feeling as someone who's been womaned in in my life and um the hysteria that people put on you um so if I react in a certain way way based on an experience that I've had, then I'm being hysterical or I'm being out of line or I'm overreacting

or it didn't happen in the way that I thought it did. Or, you know, the gaslighting that happens for women, I think, is systemic. And I, yeah, I think that's, that's the sort of biggest thing that I, that I've sort of experienced on stage that I can't, that I can't really take out into the real world because, because of those sort of judgments and consequences maybe that I would face. Yeah. You've decided as well to, to make this film in the Welsh language.

There are English subtitles, which is obviously how I was able to watch it. But why was that important for you, for the film to be in Welsh? So Welsh is my first language. And, you know, I think coming from a culture which is a minority culture um with a minority language I think that it's you know I haven't heard anything in in in my mother tongue that represents my experience um I think that is due to a lot of stuff and I think that um the older generation maybe don't like to talk about stuff in the way that maybe our generation is a lot more open um and also I think I'm really interested in how quickly you know know, language around trauma evolves.

And maybe because the Welsh language is sort of a quite an old language. Well, it's a very old language. And this is not to say that it's it's a language that can't keep up. But I think the terminology is like takes a bit longer to to sort of seep in um and so but I think that the most important thing for me was was to speak and experience um in the language where I haven't heard that stuff being spoken about before um what would you like people to take away from from this film when they've watched it you know I would really love people to take away um the agency that they have um I felt for a really long time I didn't have any agency. And I think that it's, you know,

I say in the film, you know, you have to create your own light, I suppose. And, you know, if you're able to do that, then do it. But for me, you know, again, it didn't, you know, as you said, it happened, you know, the sexual assault happened to me when I was 21. Like I'm 30 next week. And so it's taken me nine years to get to this point. It hasn't been easy and it hasn't been like, okay, you can create your own light. And it's like, you know, you know, toxic positivity and all that. That's not, that's not what I'm saying. But I think that, that there is joy and there is laughter still. And I think that that's really important to hold on to

as much as recognising the pain. Singer and songwriter Margaret Shon there and her new film, Hinan Hader. It's available to watch right now on Diveplayer. Last week, Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes came out as a lesbian. Posting about it on social media, she wrote, I can finally breathe.

But what added an extra layer to her secrecy was her previous job. Long before she was an Olympian, Dame Kelly served in the army in the late 1980s, at a time when you could face prison for being gay as a member of the military. It wasn't until 2000 that a ban on being gay and serving in the Army, Navy or RAF was lifted. And last week, the government announced a review into the impact this ban had on LGBT plus people serving in the armed forces. Emma Riley is someone who knows all about this. She served in the Royal Navy from 1990 to 1993 until she was arrested and discharged for being a lesbian. Emma told us why she resonates with Dame Kelly. I was very thrilled to be asked to be part of Dame Kelly's

Being Me documentary that went out last night because I think what she needed to do as part of her journey was to understand a little bit more about what had happened to other people at the same time when she was in the military. I can completely understand her complete fear about would she be charged or would there be any kind of repercussions later on because you live your life in complete fear that you're going to be found out.

And she was lucky in some ways that she wasn't actually outed and arrested as part of her military career. She was a hair's breadth probably from that kind of reaction that happened to me. I mean, I basically went out one evening and told somebody that I thought was my friend that I thought I might be gay and they basically phoned up the military police and I was arrested the next day. Yeah, horrendous. It's got a huge legacy for people who've gone through that,

as far as trust issues and all sorts of things. I want to come to that. But for you, that was somebody you were serving alongside? Yes. Yeah. And you were just talking to them as a friend? Yeah, I'd had a really hard time. My father had just had a quadruple bypass operation. He had not had a great operation. And They'd had to open him up twice. He was having blackouts. It was not a great time in my life. And at the time I was feeling I probably was gay. How old were you at this point?

21. 21, okay. I joined at 18 straight out of school. And yeah, I loved being in the Royal Navy. I was relatively good at what I did. But yeah, I told this person I thought I might be gay. And it was literally pretty much the next day they got me up and said, get up, get dressed, get downstairs, you're under arrest.

And what happened after that? They take you away. You spend, well, maybe two, three hours in a police interrogation. It's a recorded interrogation to SRB, so Special Investigation Branch officers are asking all these questions, trying to find out, basically trying to get you to admit everything and so on and so forth.

I mean, you're in there with these two people and then I also had a chief friend with me who was supposed to be my support through the process and I was getting really upset. So they stopped the interview for five, ten minutes. And I said something, I don't recall what, in that space where it wasn't being recorded. And the moment that the investigators came back into the room and pressed that record button, the chief friend told them exactly what I'd said.

So at that moment, I know I am completely and utterly alone in this journey, completely alone. And what happened after that? They go through every single item that you have. They take you to your block and they stand you outside your room and say that they're going to go through everything. They went through all my letters. They confiscated stuff in there. They confiscated a su there. They confiscated a Suede album because it had two people who might have been two women on the front of it.

They confiscated a Julian Clary video because, of course, everybody who watched Julian Clary is going to be gay. Of course. The funniest moment, I suppose, looking back is that just before they went in to root through all my stuff, The woman who was going to do it asked me, do you have any electrical equipment? Yes. Your face is kind of saying what I thought at the time. And I said, well, no. But frankly, if you went through pretty much any woman's gear in a women's block in the Royal Navy, you would find plenty of electrical equipment. So it's all about, as Dame Kelly said,

it's all about humiliation and punishing that person for something that is inherently part of their DNA. So they're looking for names. They're looking to follow the line to find the next person and to root people out. It was a real witch hunt time when nobody was safe. It was horrendous. And then the worst thing that they did to me in some ways was that they then sent me home to tell my parents. And you hadn't told your parents?

I hadn't told my parents, no. So not only am I being sent home to tell them that I'm being thrown out of the military, something I don't want to do because I don't want to disappoint them. You know, my parents were incredibly proud of me for going in there. But I had to come out to them as gay, a force coming out. And it was... With not your choice. Not my choice. I was terrified.

And I'm thankful to this day that when I told them they were hugely supportive. But I can see that moment in my memory. I know exactly the room, I can picture it, I can picture every single chair exactly where I was sitting, where my parents were sitting and it's just seared in my brain that I had to go through that. And you were discharged? I was discharged, yes. And I suppose I could call it a lucky discharge in that

it was a discharge, sure. So it was what they'd quote as an honourable discharge. So in my case, nothing, I kept my pension and I kept some of the rights. I didn't, unlike the other gentleman that Dame Kelly spoke to, I didn't have that red writing at the top of my reference saying discharged with disgrace. But that doesn't stop you from then having to completely redraw your map of the world. I came after there, spent maybe five or six weeks just at my home address, not knowing what the hell I was going to do. And then had to build a career of something. You know, I've just never had a career plan because my career plan was ripped away from me in 1993. And you were so young.

21, yeah. What has been the lasting effect of that process on you? A lot of it boils down to trust issues. I have a real big problem opening up and being vulnerable with anybody. And so it really took, well, I mean, the way I dealt with it is that it took me five years before I felt I could do something about it. But it's probably taken me 25 years to really be comfortable, properly comfortable in my own skin and things like for example i sing with a choir and um you know as you're getting ready to go on stage you might be changing somewhere and you you've got to change your costume you're putting makeup on or whatever you need to do but

basically there was a long long time when i was so paranoid that people would be concerned about me being gay that i would almost find a corner so I could look in the corner and not have to look anywhere else in the room when people were changing because I was so terrified that people would be thinking I was some kind of predatory lesbian and looking at them in the wrong way I was worried that if I you know somebody was upset and I put my hand on their shoulder to say you know it's going to be okay I would would they were going to um take it the wrong way so it just completely changes the way that you interact with people and put something in your life which may have developed in you and with confidence and and and very natural as your

sexuality made it feel like it's not right in some way because of you losing your career yeah i'm very sorry to to hear that and of course for others who know nothing about this made it feel like it's not right in some way because of you losing your career after it. I'm very sorry to hear that. And of course, for others who know nothing about this, they will still not be able to perhaps conclude that it was only in 2000 that this changed. And that was literally, I was one of the few people that took cases against it. So I tried in the UK.

It was myself first at the Ministry of Defence and it wasn't going to go anywhere. And that was like, it took me five years to even start that process. And then in 1998, we took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, and there were four headline cases and myself and another couple of people who were also coming through at the same time. And even then it took until September 1999 before the European Court ruled in favour of those four headline cases and then after that mine and forced the UK government to change the law on January 12, 2000.

And I totally would tell you if that European Court had not done that, if we had not taken those cases, we still would have that ban in place for at least another decade, at least. And the amount of people that were at the height of it 300 or more a year being thrown out on the basis of sexuality. So that's 1000s and 1000s of men and women who are good, patriotic, you know, people who have been denied this opportunity to serve their country just because they are gay. That was Emma Riley speaking to us about her own story. And if you're interested in Kelly Holmes documentary, which Emma does featuring, it's available to watch right now

on the ITV Hub. Now, a pregnant American woman who was on holiday in Malta this month was not allowed to get an induced medical miscarriage when she needed it because of the country's strict abortion laws. Malta is the only EU country that has a total ban on abortion in all circumstances. Maltese doctors told Andrea Prudente, who was nearly four months pregnant, that the placenta was partly detached and her pregnancy was no longer viable, but there was still a beating heart. The complications meant that her life was at risk, but in Malta, terminating a pregnancy is completely illegal, even when the fetus won't survive. So Andrea ended up flying to Mallorca to get treatment, where she's recovering currently in a hotel. Emma spoke to Andrea earlier this week to find out what happened and how she's doing now. I'm doing okay.

We got discharged from the hospital Sunday night and have been kind of convalescing in a hotel here and after an almost two-week ordeal and 10 days in a hospital bed, I have, you know, I'm weak and fatigued and have a lot of you know emotional distress and kind of processing to do so but getting good food and some sleep I'm each day I'm feeling a little bit more myself and unable to kind of work through the waves of grief at having lost a child that we wanted and yes processing a really very intense experience because you were on holiday uh pregnant and and started to have have complications as I described yeah we were I was about 15 weeks pregnant when I had some profuse bleeding and um then two days

later my water broke so there was there's kind of a two-part problem where the pregnancy went catastrophically wrong which was the placenta detaching partly and then the membrane rupturing so there was no amniotic fluid around the baby and doctors were immediately direct and unambiguous that there was no way that the baby would survive she did still have a heartbeat but she could not continue to develop and at 15 weeks it's not even close to viable yet so that that was the start of the the nightmare and and then you were not able to receive the help you you would expect to receive because of of malta's laws correct yeah in my understanding is the appropriate course of action in that scenario um is to medically induce the end of

the pregnancy and evacuation of the uterus the the real there there were two main risks. One was hemorrhage. And then the other very serious risk once the membrane ruptured was for potentially fatal infection, because now the uterus is open and exposed and it really gets kind of only a matter of time. And the doctors in Malta weren't very direct about that. We had to kind of piece that together, doing our own research, contacting doctors at home, exactly what was at stake. Because, of course, we were grieving the loss of our daughter. But then coming to the realization, my life is at stake here. And the doctors in Malta weren't going to protect me. Because it's not legal for them to do so with the way that their laws are regarding abortion.

So long as there was a fetal heartbeat, they wouldn't intervene. Didn't matter that the baby could never survive, that it wasn't viable. There was no one to... The only person to protect was me. Our daughter was already lost. And your partner and you then had to, as you say, get up to speed and make some quite fast decisions, which resulted in travelling, which is probably the last thing you felt like doing.

Oh, not only was traveling hard to think about, but also every doctor we spoke to, including the one overseeing my care in Malta, said absolutely do not get on an airplane. You could hemorrhage and die on the plane. So we weren't able to arrange travel on our own. We looked into trying to hire an air ambulance and they required a doctor's note saying you were discharged and safe to fly.

We couldn't get that. So it was really only by the grace of our American insurance. We had bought a travel insurance policy for the trip and they put a team together and did all this logistics planning and a crew, you know, a doctor, a French doctor, a nurse on a private jet flew down from Belgium. I went ambulance to air ambulance to ambulance to hospital. So I was never not being supervised because the risk was that high and at

that point it had been you know more than seven days since my water broke the water breaking is when the infection risk really goes through the roof how are you feeling during this time it it was a dark time I mean on the one hand, trying to, you know, the grief of finding out this was a wanton pregnancy. We planned for it. So there was that. But that kind of got, you know, all jumbled up with this sort of what felt like a fight for survival. We felt trapped. We were panicking.

You know, hours and days were ticking by. I was like, you know, I felt captive in this hospital room. I was getting needles all the time and the tools necessary to do the relatively straightforward intervention that would that would take me out of danger so it was really psychologically challenging for both Jay and I. Yeah Jay's your partner I should say I mean we we did contact the the last hospital you you were in in Mal. We haven't had a response from them. There's also been a letter from more than 100 doctors in Malta off the back of your case to push for change, to be allowed to help women like yourself in this situation. I should say you did get that treatment after that journey was arranged. And I know you said at the beginning how you're feeling now,

but, but is, is the medical side complete? Is that, is that finished? Are you, are you safe and well in that respect now? Yeah, they induced labor and I delivered as our tiny baby girl, we got to hold her and they were able to avoid surgery that sometimes has to happen if the you know the delivery isn't complete um so yeah I mean my my body I'm I'm out of the woods I don't I'm not I don't feel strong yet and And I'm still having, you know, I'll still have some sort of aftermath for a while. But I'm safe. I mean, I'm so happy to hear that and that we can talk today. But I know it'd be interesting to hear from you why you want to talk, why you want to speak about what's happened to you.

Because we're also speaking in light of a big change in your country, a big change in America with the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision. And we're going to return to that a bit later on because there's lots of legal cases going on at the moment and lots of changes as the map of America is redrawn regarding this and what will be allowed and what won't be allowed. But why is it important for you to to talk about what's happened well in the beginning we we got the press involved and started telling our story as kind of a hail mary attempt to you know save me when before we had we were able to arrange the medevac but then you know we've kind of found ourselves caught up in this whirlwind and the

timing is, you know, kind of perfect. And this matters to me, this issue has always mattered to me. And I have the sense that there's a possibility that our suffering won't have been in vain if we can, if by being honest and sharing the details of our story can help, can add to the conversation on a really, you know, intensely charged global issue. The idea that states in our home country are beginning to implement laws similar to Malta's, it's kind of mind boggling. And I think you know it's it's before we went through this experience it it had never occurred to us that you know we'd never conceived of this set of circumstances where a pregnancy kind of like a part of incomplete miscarriage and that that

would fall under the umbrella of abortion and that, you know, there's this sort of technicality of fetal heartbeat that doesn't fully, fully take into account the viability. Like, is there a baby that can ever be in this world? And then that ill-defined threshold for, because sometimes total bans on abortions I understand have a cause for saving the mother's life but what's the threshold how close do you let her get um and and one midwife at Malta I was pressing on that question like what what are you like what are you going to do if what are you going to do when you know I get an infection and the answers I got were not super direct but kind of pieced together you know that if I got an infection they would throw more antibiotics at it some infections are resistant

to antibiotics I understood my what I took away from one particular midwife was that if I had an infection and they had exhausted their resources and I was on the, her words, brink of death, in this instance, in your case, in your life, you know, can complicate and put at risk women's lives when there is a wanted pregnancy that goes wrong, which is a nuance that is not often in the discussion about rights to do with this part of what some you know describe as as a fundamental part of health care others of course have a very different view exactly and and that there might not be a viable baby to save or protect there was no one to protect she was already lost that was andrea prudente there speaking to Emma on Tuesday. Our thoughts go out to her and her family. Thank you so much for listening to this programme. Remember, you can catch up on any previous shows on BBC Sounds right now. We'll be back again live on Monday.

Until then, take care. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. 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.