Grace Campbell says new Fringe show about abortion feels like an ‘exorcism’

‘Abortion is really hard to talk about,’ the comedian said

Grace Campbell has chosen to speak about having an abortion live on stage at the forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The comedian, 30, has turned her experience of terminating a pregnancy into new material for her latest show Grace Campbell Is on Heat, which will premiere at the Scottish arts festival this August alongside performances from other comics including Hannah Gadsby and Sophie Duker.

Campbell had an abortion in October last year and has previously detailed how she fell into a deep depression after the procedure in a piece for The Guardian, claiming she felt unprepared by doctors for the physical and mental aftermath of the termination.

She had not been warned by doctors that the abortion could leave her bleeding heavily for more than six weeks afterwards. The star said she was still bleeding when she flew to the US to perform a round of stand-up shows, and wrote about her depression in the hope of helping others suffering.

Speaking to The Times in a new interview, Campbell said: “I was on my own in New York, wearing a nappy, writing a list in my notepad of all of the places that I’d cried publicly and it was just everywhere. In every CVS [pharmacy] I would stop and write it down, because I had to document how bad it was.”

Of On Heat, Campbell explained: “I did the only thing I thought might make it better: talk about it on stage. It’s not been this cathartic, therapeutic process, because I’m still reeling. But it’s almost like an exorcism.”

Grace Campbell will speak about having an abortion in her new show at Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Grace Campbell)

The comedian added: “It is also funny. Abortion is really hard to talk about, and very conflicting. And people don’t know if they’re allowed to laugh. So what I’m trying to do is show that in the moments I’m letting you laugh, you laugh.”

Campbell, whose father is Alastair Campbell, the journalist, author and broadcaster who headed up Tony Blair’s communications team when Blair was prime minister, specified that the show is “not vulgar”.

“My abortion matured me in a way that I could have never prepared for, and I think the show is a reflection of that,” she said.

“There are a few bits about sex, but really not in the same way as before. There’s no part of this show that my mum or dad would have to go, like, ‘urgh,’ during… So that’s hopefully a good sign.”

In her piece for The Guardian last month, the comedian wrote: “The doctor showed me the foetus on the screen, gave me a pill, told me some basic facts, but he didn’t prepare me for what was about to come.

“That I wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror, or at pictures of myself, for months…That I would feel a pervasive sense of guilt… And that then I would feel shame — shame that feeling guilty was in some way a dishonour to the women who fought for my right to be able to have this choice.”