I had an abortion at 23 and still grieve. I can't celebrate this change to the law

This week's vote allows pregnancy terminations without limits. Freedom has consequences - I wish it had been done with more regret

- Tanya Gold

This is a piece about ambivalence, and grief. At Kingston hospital in London in the summer of 1997, I was 23. The foetus, which I call a baby (and you cannot stop me calling it that) was 12 weeks old. I was a using alcoholic and drug addict, I did not know who its father was, and I felt - I had been told - that I had no choice but to lie on the gurney under a bright green blanket with my terror and submit to having it - but I know it was him, you cannot stop me calling it him - removed from me.

This was freedom, agency, a future. This was benevolence for a member of the luckiest generation of women in the history of the world.

All true, of course, but it was not what I wanted. I wanted him. I found out I was pregnant at five weeks, in a casualty department, being treated for an overdose. I was lucky there too: some girls, much younger than I was, are six months along before they understand what they face.

It was the spring of my final year at university. I was told to have it, always it, removed immediately for my health and his, because I was an alcoholic. It would be nothing, I was told, which was a lie - but I didn't do it right away.

I used my final exams as an excuse to wait, and I hoped and prayed for something to rescue us. Nothing did.