Who's Afraid of Tricky Conversations? Talking to students about abortion
CW: This article contains discussions of abortion.
Leaving my house one day this April, my path was blocked by three leaflets featuring a foetus curled within the veiny, puce-coloured walls of the inside of a womb. I stopped. This was the Scottish Family Party’s (SFP) attempt to entice voters to put a cross in their box on election day; I was surprised. In St Andrews, a town chock-full of young people in a country with no formal disputes about abortion laws, how would this rhetoric be received?
Prayksha Hegde and Akondu Iyoke, students in the School of Medicine who felt comfortable discussing abortion because of their “scientific and pragmatic approach,” shared their views on the subject. Hegde and Iyoke are also Vice-President and President of Students for Global Health St Andrews (SfGH), respectively.
Hegde said that her conversations about abortion have mostly been with her close friends, so she hasn’t encountered many people she disagrees with. Iyoke has had a similar experience.
Although Hegde had heard of Students For Life St Andrews (SFL)— an anti-abortion society — through speaking with her friends at other universities, she found “it’s more of a thing” in larger towns where anti-abortion societies have a “much bigger presence.” According to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the University of Manchester’s freshers’ fayre featured a silent protest by other students in front of the anti-abortion society’s stand this September.
It’s difficult to determine whether this specific clash of polarising opinions is reflective of all UK universities, however. In St Andrews, SFL had concerns that they would spark a similar incident at last year’s Freshers Fayre. Rebecca is a member of SFL who has requested partial anonymity due to previous repercussions from discussing anti-abortion views publicly. She recalled that last year at Freshers’ Fayre, SFL forfeited their stall because they had been “placed right next to the Feminist Society’s [stall],” and did not want to “cause a divide.” There were no new members of the society in the 2025/2026 academic year. This year, however, Rebecca said that there were “41 new members,” evidence of a fast-growing anti-abortion interest in St Andrews.
Hegde thinks that the inequalities surrounding abortion are not talked about enough. “For a lot of women, it is still very, very unsafe to access [abortions].” According to the WHO an “unsafe” abortion is one performed by someone either “lacking the necessary skills” or in an environment that does not meet medical standards.
Ironically, in 2025 “termination rates in the most deprived areas” remained “around double those of least deprived areas,” according to PHS. NHS Tayside was one such area: 20.3 women per 1000 had terminations, compared with the national average of 17.3 per 1000. While this figure suggests that access to abortion is widely available, Hegde explained, this higher proportion of abortions denotes a lack of sexual health resources in these areas. Iyoke found this “really worrying.” He said that it is “important that awareness is raised,” to make sexual healthcare safer.
Through SFL, Rebecca has had “a lot of conversations with people who share the same view as [her regarding abortion].” She shared that “it’s something that people don’t talk about that much [outside of SFL].” Rebecca admitted that she has lost friends when she’s been open about her views with people outside of anti-abortion groups. “It is a divisive issue.”
This has not deterred her from pursuing these conversations: “I think that a lot of people don’t actually know what happens during [an] abortion and I think that if more people knew and had more conversations [about abortions],” not only would there be “more safeguarding around the issue,” but “more people would be pro-life.” She did not explain her reasoning.
While she acknowledged that abortion is a ‘sensitive issue’, Rebecca believed that “just because we don’t agree on something doesn’t mean we can’t be friends [...] or have good, productive conversations.”
Speaking on the nature of these debates, Desdemona Smyth, a fourth-year student, said: “I think that because we’re a town [that is] so small, there’s a fast turnover of what’s being talked about.”
”If it’s not something that people can grasp onto personally, there’s sort of a disconnect, [...] which is the centrepiece of a lot of political issues [here],” she said.
The 1967 Abortion Act legalised abortion up to twenty-four weeks in Scotland. Smyth also commented that it is “less moralised over here” than in her home state of Massachusetts, where it is presently legal in-state but could be revoked any time under federal law.
Citing her experience, Smyth said that “the loudest voices” on topics like abortion are often “the ones who have experienced it the least,” which creates a fear of “vitriolic attacks.” Smyth recognised that abortion’s status in Scotland as a secondary issue may have some upsides: letting conversations “bubble under the radar”, she said, can “protect people” with personal, even traumatic, experiences.
Like Rebecca, Smyth acknowledged the “emotional nuances” of going through an abortion. “It is actually a political issue that takes on a completely different dimension [if] you experience it,” and “people hate nuance,” she said. According to Smyth, the lack of open conversation among students in St Andrews is a symptom of a larger problem where issues that “cannot be resolved immediately” are not discussed at all. If the simple ‘right-and-wrong’ answer is deviated from, people are put-off from entering into discussion about it.
Rebecca agreed that this is troubling, and in her experience, “a lot of people who do avoid difficult conversations” are contributing to the problem. She added, however, that “there are also a lot of people [in St Andrews] that [she] probably wouldn’t try and have these conversations with” because it would be “unproductive.”
Smyth also commented that, while she believes it is “important to hear different perspectives” on some divisive issues, she has not “heard a nuanced argument against abortion.” She was unsure whether there was “anything she can gain from talking to” people with anti-abortion views about the subject.
Despite their varying opinions, all four students shared strikingly similar experiences regarding their conversations about the topic: Smyth claimed people are “unable to move beyond [their] first opinion” on the issue, and so conversations stagnate. Rebecca echoed this: some people she has asked about abortion “don’t want to have an opinion on it because it’s such a controversial topic.”
As Iyoke neatly framed it: “the conversations are there,” but “there should be more.” Perhaps overcoming immediate disagreement is important for pushing this conversation forward, despite opposition from both sides of the debate, opening a channel for what Rebecca termed “respectful” dialogue.
If you or someone you know needs support with sexual healthcare, access to abortion, or someone to talk to, these links may be helpful:
Illustraion by Lucy Maitland-Lewis
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