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.” T.