The counsellor couldn't tell me how many happily settled parents opt for an abortion rather than another child, just that 'quite a few clients choose termination because they feel that their family is complete'. So, maybe right, maybe wrong, but not abnormal. Not the kind of morality I advocate to my children.

The situation was this: I was 37, mother of Zoe (4) and Jack (2), longing to find at least a part-time paid job now Zoe was going to school, for the sake of my sanity as much as our finances. And I was pregnant again. Of course we must have an abortion. But... we see-sawed.

If only I was younger. If only I had a secure job with maternity leave, flexible hours and pots of money... Our decision was essentially pragmatic with some comforting post hoc rationalisation: control of our fertility is crucial to women's struggle for equality. And given that (a) neither my partner nor I believed that a just-conceived foetus was a person, and (b) we were using contraceptives, termination was the logical next step. However, there were several interim steps first.

Step 1. The visit to the doctor. As I explained that I needed an abortion, Jack started to cry. For a weird moment I thought it was because he had understood. Then I remembered the last time we were here it was for his injections. I put him on my breast to calm him and felt ridiculously relieved that this might show the doctor I was a loving mother. No questions asked, he gave me a letter to take to the clinic.

Step 2. The clinic's waiting room TV provided its own ironic commentary: the titles for a film called Diagnosis Murder were on the screen as I went to my counselling session, while Tom and Barbara were happily living their childless Good Life on my return. A member of staff tactfully changed channels when children's TV started up.

Step 3. Return to the clinic. Another building this time, recently redecorated, fresh flowers. More clients arrived. We smiled at each other but no one spoke. A long wait - a luxury to read so much of the paper first thing in the morning. Eventually I was called to change into my nightshirt. (I only own two - I didn't bring the one I wore to give birth to my children).

The woman before me had opted for a local anaesthetic. I could hear her cries of pain. I began to ooze tears of self-pity. Embarrassed, I tried to chat. 'It's like the labour ward, hearing the howls of the other women.' Was I trying to advertise my status as a mother? Did I think it would make the nurse see me differently? 'But at least then you have a baby to take home with you,' she replied.

At last the oblivion of the anaesthetic. It was only 20 minutes or so later when I joined two young women downstairs at a table. A nursing auxiliary asked if I wanted tea or coffee. We chatted about the weirdness of the experience and the number of lies we'd had to tell just to make our trips to the clinic possible. 'If you think how many women pass through this clinic every day, seven days a week,' said one, 'and yet no one ever talks about it...'

I was discharged by a nurse - antibiotics for seven days, no sex or swimming for a fortnight. Then my partner arrived to take me home.

And that was it.