Mandu Reid, the new leader of the Women’s Equality party (WEP), has spoken publicly about the impact of her abortion and why it compelled her to enter politics.
In an interview with the Observer, Reid said her decision to have a termination at 33 had not been “an easy choice” but one made because she “couldn’t balance being a single mother and hold on to my career aspirations”.
Reid, now 38, became the first black leader of a British political party last month. Now she also becomes the first to speak publicly about her decision to have an abortion.
“I always imagined myself as somebody who would have a busy, productive, fulfilling career and that I’d become a mother. I imagined those dual things existing and it was what I wanted,” she said. But, she recalled, after becoming pregnant while working for the mayor of London, she was unable to work out how she could have had the baby and continued in her career.
“I wasn’t properly together with the guy, he was quite a bit younger than me, and we had a lot of conversations about what to do,” she said. “It is strange to me, when I reflect on it now, that neither of us could imagine a scenario where I wasn’t the sole caregiver of the child and the main breadwinner.”
She added: “I crunched the numbers and realised at that point in time, I couldn’t balance being a single mother and hold on to my career aspirations. He was young, I couldn’t twist his arm and make him do this with me, so I had a termination. It wasn’t an easy choice.”
Last year, then Conservative MP Heidi Allen, who has since defected to Change UK, and Labour MP Jess Phillips became the first women to talk in the Commons about their abortions, during a debate on extending abortion rights in Northern Ireland.
Reid said that it wasn’t until she studied the WEP’s policy programme that she felt indignant. “If what WEP were advocating was reality here in Britain as it is in northern Europe, I would have been able to make a different decision,” she said.
Reid, who is the founder of period poverty charity The Cup Effect, joined the WEP in 2018. She went on to stand in the Lewisham East byelection last year and became its leader following Sophie Walker’s resignation in January.
“The parties that wield political power and influence [are] not ambitious enough on gender equality,” said Reid. “And this little party here [had] done the work and the thinking on equality, parenting, working flexibility – what is the excuse?”
