‘I had to use a goods lift to go for an abortion’

“I was sobbing as I was put to sleep, and I was sobbing when I woke up.”

This is the painful memory Dani Czernuszka-Watt replays in her mind as she remembers going for the abortion she never wanted to have.

Dani was told she would have to abort due to a medical complication from her previous pregnancy, but says the experience of going through the abortion as a wheelchair user left her traumatised.

It was Dani’s fourth pregnancy, her second since a rugby tackle left her paralysed from the waist down.

She tried several wheelchair sports after sustaining those injuries in 2017, ultimately discovering para ice hockey, which takes her all over the world competing.

Mum-of-three Dani was in Bangkok with the Team GB squad at the start of 2023, when an episode of chronic pain led to her being admitted to hospital when she returned to the UK.

She had already been told she had pelvic congestion syndrome – a condition that causes chronic pain in the pelvis – shortly after the birth of her youngest daughter, Isla Rose, in 2022.

But she says doctors never told her it could lead to problems with future pregnancies.

So when she was told she was pregnant again during that same hospital visit, she says she was initially “over the moon”.

“We always spoke about having a big family,” Dani says.

But she was soon told she would need to medically terminate the pregnancy due to the complications caused by the condition in her pelvis.

Despite her “utter guilt and shame” at having to have an abortion, Dani had contacted the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) in Richmond, west London, to arrange the procedure.

“I was told by the clinic manager that they’d never had anyone in a wheelchair before, and that they were unsure whether I could be accommodated,” she says.

On the day of the abortion, Dani had to access the building using a lift normally reserved for deliveries.

Although she could wheel her narrow wheelchair through the clinic’s small corridors, she said her husband Pete was not allowed into the room to help lift her from her chair on to the bed.

She says she was lucky to still have the strength of her upper body, as there was no hoist to help lift her either.

“If I was a woman without a wheelchair and I needed this procedure, I might have been treated differently,” Dani says.

“To me, it was like they were seeing my wheelchair and not the person on it.”

The BBC asked BPAS about Dani’s experiences at the clinic.

Though they did not comment on the specifics, including having to use the goods lift as an access point, BPAS chief executive Heidi Stewart said the service was “committed to supporting all women who need to access the care we provide” and to “ensuring adjustments to treatment are made wherever possible”.

But she says work is needed to modernise some BPAS clinics, and that abortion services have historically been “significantly underfunded”.

Dani’s story – of a disabled person struggling to access the same available healthcare as non-disabled people – is not an unfamiliar one.

But the World Health Organization, in its most recent abortion care guidelines, says there is still a lack of evidence around disabled people’s experiences of accessing abortions and how they are supported to do so.

Writing in the Medical Law Review journal last year, academics Magdalena Furgalska and Fiona de Londras say that most disabled people going for abortions in England and Wales are likely to be seen, at least initially, “by independent providers with limited resources, facilities and time to ensure effective and appropriate provision of care in complex cases”.

They say making abortion care available to everyone means improving accessibility for disabled people, “reinforcing the need to eliminate everyday barriers to abortion care to protect the health and reproductive choices of pregnant people”.

Dani is now working with the Spinal Injuries Association as part of their team campaigning for more accessible healthcare for women.

Dani has also spoken to MPs at Westminster, where she discussed other incidents in which she was denied MRI scans in hospital because of similar problems with accessibility.

“Advocation in the disabled world is exhausting,” she says.

“I’ve had to battle a system that’s not delivering the same healthcare I could access before I was a disabled woman. I believe that comes from a lack of knowledge.

“Before I was in my wheelchair I found no barriers, why should I face barriers now?”

You can listen to Dani’s story on the Access All podcast here.