- Amanda Bohn told Insider her 2005
abortion overseas was painful and scarring, and she now fears women in the US could face the same fate. - Bohn got an abortion in a hidden clinic in
London on her own when she was 19 years old.
Inside the clinic, Amanda Bohn said she heard a stream of endless screaming. For 45 minutes, women in the next room wailed as a doctor performed an abortion.
It was 2005, and Bohn at that time was a 19-year-old from
Bohn learned she was pregnant while in Ireland and went to a local clinic to get checked out. She recalled telling a nurse that she wanted to get an abortion, but in 2005 abortion was illegal in the country. The nurse, in a hushed tone, then told her that she should go to London to get one.
Her family in the US had left her a trust fund, from which Bohn took out $2,000 to pay for airfare to London, a hotel room, and the procedure.
When she arrived in London, she was six weeks pregnant. The clinic she was referred to redirected her to another location, which Bohn characterized as a "house that was hidden in this residential area that you would have no idea was an actual abortion clinic."
Bohn was instructed to go alone.
At 19, without her boyfriend, family or friends, she went alone to a strange house in a new city far away from home to get an abortion.
Upon entering the house, about a dozen cots lined up in a narrow room, she recalled to Insider. A woman sat on each cot until a doctor entered an adjacent room and called their name.
"We were all in a cattle car," Bohn said.
While they waited, the sound of women's cries pierced the air. The door to the procedure room was shut but the screams burst through, recalled Bohn, now 36.
"You'd see women go in. You'd hear them screaming. You'd hear them being hysterical," she said. "[Then] they'd be helped out with a nurse back to their cot and they'd just be left there to sob or do whatever."
She continued, "We had no privacy. There was no dignity. There was just us lined up. No barrier, no curtain, nothing."
When her name was called, Bohn walked into the room and met the doctor. She chose to forgo sedation because she came alone for the procedure and was nervous about being in London for the first time.
The doctor performed a vacuum aspiration procedure, in which the doctor inserts a small tube into the uterus and uses a suctioning tool to remove the contents.
Looking back, Bohn remembers two things: the unnerving pain she felt and the sound of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" playing in the background.
"It was incredibly painful," Bohn said. "I, too, got hysterical, was doubled over in pain."
Although the procedure was agonizing and emotionally scarring for Bohn, she said, it appeared to be like a normal day for the doctor.
"I'm in a lot of pain, because they're sucking out my uterus with a vacuum right now," Bohn said. "And this doctor has the audacity to have freaking ABBA on, this "Dancing Queen" on. And here I am going through this very emotionally charged, traumatic, and physically traumatic thing in my life."
The procedure lasted about five or 10 minutes, Bohn said. But at that moment, it felt like hours.
Once a nurse came to help her out of the procedure room, Bohn said she went to "just cry, cry, cry, and lay in a cot with a heating pad."
'Am I a criminal now, too?'
The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked protests nationwide. Since the decision was made public, a slew of prominent individuals has blasted the ruling — from singer Billie Eilish to actress Jessica Chastain to President Joe Biden. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the court's decision, calling it a "devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States."
The legality of abortion is now in the hands of individual state legislatures, 22 of which so far have essentially made it illegal to obtain an abortion. There are expected to be added restrictions in several others.
"I found the overturn is a very triggering moment for me," Bohn told Insider. "Because I never want another person to go through what I went through. It ruined my life for several years."
Bohn currently lives in
She's gone to therapy for years because she felt guilty about going through with the procedure. Her boyfriend at the time told her to never tell anyone she had gotten an abortion, which only added to her own feelings of shame and the stigma around it. In therapy, she's found space to heal, Bohn said.
But when the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, the anguish returned. Today she thinks a lot about others who need an abortion and worries they'll have to go through similar lengths to get one as she did as fewer people across the United States will be able to access abortions safely.
Bohn said she worries that people who travel internationally within the US to obtain an abortion will encounter the same difficulties she experienced abroad.
The day the ruling came down, Bohn joined a protest organized by Planned Parenthood.
"Because it felt like now am I a criminal now, too? Am I a criminal now, too?" Bohn said.