Oh my god seriously???? Yeah there’s a post-NICU parents group in Ox, snd a FB group which is the least echo chamber I’ll ever be in. And Alistair Petrie, who I met when pregnant and is an ambassador for Borne and sent me the sweetest voice notes while it was all grim. And then we did Hamlet.

See this is the good stuff! Great people born early!

Also, I have met amazing people - who were premature or who had premature babies! We are a great, eclectic, huge club.

Collecting and noting premature people and their parents has been a huge joy in this. I did think as early as HDU “I’m sure Iona was early…”. An actor I worked with recently was one of TRIPLETS born at 30 weeks and stood my interrogation with great kindness and patience (they’re all fine).

(The presence of Gorka and Amy)

You are brilliant!

I’m so sorry you saw them. How, how can this be allowed? It could tip someone over the edge.

He attac

Anyway, I found it horrible. I hope they never return.

We also need lucid, sensible student journalism like that linked. I can’t help thinking it’s wrong that such traumatic, horrifying (and unverifiable) images can be shown on such a scale without people’s consent. You couldn’t show the nude adult body! Or (I imagine) images of a dead born child. Ugh.

The only anti-choice or pro-life position I can respect is one deeply and radically invested in sustaining that life - and that mother - AFTER birth, forever, in all circumstances, and the total social revolution that would require. While we’re not there, we need choice.

I have always been pro-choice. I wondered if my own longed-for pregnancy and child might shift that. Answer: no. The physical grimness of my pregnancy and the fact that I very nearly died at the end of it convinced me, CONVINCED me yet again that you should only be doing this if you really want to.

I used to live round the corner from what was then the Oxford abortion clinic. I got into arguments with the monks who’d protest outside. I remember the anti-choice student organisation who turned up looking thoroughly embarrassed at Pride (read the room). Both GREAT compared to these horrors.

They were giving out leaflets and I tensed up I often get the standard evangelical printed matter (and I’m all for that! Water off a duck’s back)! But none of the women tried to give us a leaflet. I was so confused and then I thought: oh, of course. We’re pushing a pram.