A mum who suffered from extreme sickness during her pregnancy felt she was left with no choice but to have an abortion because she couldn't cope any longer.
In a brand new documentary on Amazon Prime, named Sick: The Battle Against HG, one woman tells how she couldn't cope any more suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum - which is a chronic pregnancy complication which has symptoms including severe nausea, vomiting and weight loss.
Check out the trailer below:
In the film, the woman says she even considered taking her own life because her condition was so bad, before eventually deciding abortion was the only option.
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Hyperemesis gravidarum is a condition which also affected the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, when she was carrying all three of her children.
It affects 3 million women worldwide, and is thought to trigger thousands of abortions children who are so very wanted, just because the mothers can't take it any more.
The Amazon Prime documentary is presented by HG campaigner Charlotte Howden, who suffered from the condition during her pregnancy with son Henry.
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Charlotte's HG arrived when she was around seven weeks pregnant, and she says she suffered "24 hours a day, seven days a week" for 20 weeks in total, with no validation and little support from her doctor, when she approached them with the issue.
She is now calling on the medical profession to take the condition more seriously.
"I would drink and I could count to 20 seconds and then I would be sick again...
"[I] would sit there in desperation and think I just want to die, and then the thoughts of abortion or termination would come into your head because... I'm only ill because I'm pregnant,' she admitted.
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"If a doctor had come in the room and said, 'If you drink bleach and jump out the window it will cure you' I would have done it.
"Obviously in the back of my mind I would have been saying, 'If you drink bleach and jump out the window there's a possibility that you will kill your unborn child,' but I would have been like, 'Mmm, but I'm dying so I have to think about myself'."
Registered general nurse from Cornwall Caitlin Dean has campaigned about the condition for her whole career, and says that tragically as many as 10 per cent of HG pregnancies end with abortion - that's around 1,500 a year.
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In the doc, Charlotte spoke to one woman (anonymously) who heartbreakingly terminated her pregnancy after the condition left her so frail and desperate she couldn't cope any more.
"I was housebound, I couldn't go to work, couldn't look after my child, even to go to doctors was a struggle,' she told Charlotte.
"To think that was going to be my life, potentially for nine months.... we thought, we're not going to be able to do this - we wouldn't put our family or relationship through this again."
The campaigner also Rachel, who said the condition had caused pregnancy to be a "lonely, dark time" because nobody understood the severity of her condition.
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Plus, she spoke to Kirsten, from San Diego, who told her how she'd made the tough decision to have a hysterectomy after welcoming second child, due to the severity of HG in both of her pregnancies.
Kristen had lost 52lbs and was unable to keep anything she ate down when she spoke to Charlotte, describing the whole ordeal as "pure hell".
"You don't get out of bed, you're in bed 24-7 so you're literally in bed for nine months straight. You're puking for nine months straight, you're nauseous for nine months. I would be puking up to 100 times plus a day which is no exaggeration," she said.
The film was produced by Good Guys Productions and first released for a seven day preview in May 2020, to mark on International Hyperemesis Gravidarum Awareness Day.
Sick: The Battle Against HG is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
Topics: TV News, TV Entertainment, health news