Tinder match. Write, write, write. First date in November. Full of crush. I love you. Mom, dad, stepmom, I want to introduce you to someone. Christmas party together. And then …
It's a Wednesday morning in late January. Meanwhile, Anne-Sophie Keller and her boyfriend have known each other for eight weeks, they spend every free minute together, kissing, making love, talking about the future, what they expect from life, what they hope for and what they dream of. Everything is exciting, new, light, beautiful. The butterflies, the emotions, the sex. But now the 30-year-old sits on her bathroom floor and stares at two red lines that change everything.” My first thought? Fuck!” she recalls. "Everything in me clearly said no, and more strongly than I had ever felt in my life."
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Before, she was convinced that she would never be able to have an abortion. Not for moral reasons, as she points out. As a society journalist and author, Anne-Sophie Keller has been campaigning for women's rights for many years, has written numerous articles on deadlines and has written a book about the Swiss women's rights activist Iris von Roten. "I always thought that when the time comes and I'm expecting a child, I'll be full of love and then I'll definitely think it's okay," she remembers.
A big decision
But when she is actually pregnant, she picks up her cell phone and calls a gynecologist who explained to her in a newspaper article three years earlier about the options available for an abortion. Then she wakes up her partner with the words that she is not ready and has already organized everything. «My body, my choice. However, I already knew that he didn't want children at that point," says Anne-Sophie Keller. Keller fills out a two-page form at the gynecologist's and signs it. The only administrative hurdle to abortion before 12 weeks. More important, however, is the detailed conversation that the two have with the gynecologist. "It was a very sensitive and supportive conversation, in which the doctor wanted to find out whether our decision had really been thought through," says Anne-Sophie Keller. She was lucky. Because this goodwill is not present everywhere: "I have heard from women who have been in large hospitals and have quickly felt that the doctor does not actually think the abortion is okay."
A week goes by. The two newly in love spend it together, discussing, crying. Not out of doubt. "We were sure of our decision, but it was still a big decision."
On a Tuesday afternoon in February, Anne-Sophie Keller swallows three tablets of Mifegyne, which opens the cervix and loosens the uterine lining. 24 hours later she starts bleeding. Her gynecologist tells her to catch everything she pees in a sieve and keep it in a jam jar filled with water. When you visit the clinic the next day, it turns out that there is also a piece of tissue the size of a fingernail between the pieces of blood – inside it is an embryo, after six weeks of pregnancy it is just two millimeters in size.
It's over. Anne-Sophie Keller is among the 3 percent for whom the first drug is successful and no second, labor-inducing drug is needed to terminate the pregnancy. Even today, a year and a half later, she says: “This decision was absolutely right. For me, for us, but also for the baby. A child deserves a resounding yes. No 'okay, then let's do it'."
The feeling that remains is gratitude. Gratitude for living in a country where she has the right to control her own body. Gratitude for her job, which allows her to pay 1200 francs for the abortion. «I am also grateful to my interviewees who reported on their experiences with abortion. This enabled me to form a differentiated opinion on the subject early on.”
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Pregnant unnoticedAfter four weeks the child was bornHow can a woman not recognize that she is carrying a child? Victims are called liars. It can happen to anyone. In the first 12 weeks, pregnant women often pay hundreds of francs themselves for examinations that the health insurance company should actually have to pay in full. But most of the time they don't notice this because the law is formulated so vaguely. MoreSelf-determined birth«I had complete trust in my body»One in four mothers experienced coercion during childbirth. That's why women are increasingly thinking about what they want in advance - and with good reason. MoreThe Beobachter-Newsletter – Knowing what is important.
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