She’s looked after teenagers, rape survivors and trafficked sex workers – and assisted at terminations while she’s been pregnant herself. Still, she wouldn’t change her job for anything.
Zoe Williams
Thu 14 Mar 2024
Juno Carey, a pseudonym, is a midwife practitioner who has worked in an abortion clinic in the UK for the last eight years. She lives with her wife and their three children – the baby’s at home when I meet her, along with Carey’s sister, who’s looking after him. Carey is tidy and serene, the woman you’d single out in a playground if you needed a tissue, or a hairbrush, or some nice word on a bad day.
She has written a book about abortion that is not at all serene, but deeply knowledgable, full of conviction and not even trying to keep the peace. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book so plain in its thinking and descriptions – of the women and their situations, of what abortion care looks like and the dilemmas, sensitivities and practicalities in a terrain that is discussed so much by those who oppose it, and shrouded in silence by those who support it. I wouldn’t say Carey’s tone was ever celebratory, but what often comes over in her anonymised stories is the sheer blissful relief of no longer having to be pregnant when you didn’t want to be, and the tight bond of gratitude that exists between patients and medics. We probably don’t talk about that enough.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/14/juno-carey-midwife-abortions-terminations-rape-survivors-sex-workers