How universal credit rules force women into abortions
When Sally came round from the anaesthetic her cheeks were already wet with tears.
She had been fully sedated while the doctors terminated her four-month pregnancy, a pregnancy she had desperately wanted to continue.
I was crying when wheeled me in, she says. They kept asking ‘are you sure you want to do this? and I couldn’t even answer, I just had to nod my head.
Sally is not her real name but she says she could not bear for family and friends to know what she went through. She and her partner discovered, almost halfway through the pregnancy, that the government no longer paid out child tax credit and the child element of universal credit for more than two children.
The rule applies to babies born after 6th April 2017 and it’s been widely condemned by women’s rig...