Jodi Picoult talks A Spark of Light at packed Oswestry hotel
Jodi Picoult has never shied away from tackling controversial topics in her novels, and her latest release A Spark of Light is no different.
The book, which hits shelves today, centres on a mass shooting in an abortion clinic in Mississippi.
It takes a look at reproductive rights from all angles – the pro-life campaigners, the medical professionals providing abortions, and the women making the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
Speaking to a packed audience at the Wynnstay Hotel in Oswestry yesterday, she said it was more important than ever that the topics were brought out from the shadows and de-stigmatised.
In her research for the novel, she interviewed 151 women who had ended a pregnancy and just one regretted the decision, she said.
“All of them thought about it daily,” she added.
"But only 25 were to be acknowledged in my book. That is because even after all these years, they still hadn't told their families, their partners, their children, their friends, that they had had an abortion."
Having supported a friend in college through an abortion at seven weeks, in Picoult later found herself seven weeks pregnant and was told there were complications.
"At seven weeks that was already a baby to me," she said.
"I couldn't understand how both those things could be true in my head," she admitted.
"The real problem for me is that in America we legislate reproductive rights. Laws are black and white, but the lives of women are thousands of shades of grey."
