21-Year-Old Woman Hangs Herself Months After Having an Abortion, Leaves Collection of Chilling Notes

Jane Rees, 21, was pregnant with her boyfriend’s child when he left her for another woman. After the five-month relationship ended, a devastated Rees underwent an abortion.

Weeks after she had the abortion last October, Rees attempted suicide, but she was unsuccessful. The young U.K. woman was rushed to hospital after overdosing on prescription pills. After doctors saved her life, Rees was admitted into a psychiatric services program.

But just days after the first episode, Rees hanged herself at home. Rees’s mother was the first to discover her daughter’s body Nov. 4, the morning after her suicide, along with a collection of chilling notes Rees had addressed to her parents and her 2-year-old son. Rees’s parents later discovered that their daughter had been listening to the song “Small Bump” by Ed Sheeran when she took her own life.

An excerpt of the lyrics reads:

You're just a small bump unknown and you'll grow into your skin

With a smile like hers and a dimple beneath your chin

(Oh) Finger nails the size of a half grain of rice

And eyelids closed to be soon opened wide a small bump

In four months you'll open your eyes

The song, written from the perspective of one of the songwriter’s friends, communicates the grief a parent experiences upon losing a child, though the song is about a miscarriage.

In the notes she left behind, Rees describes the guilt and heartbreak she felt following her procedure. She wrote that the decision to abort left her “upset and distressed” to the point that life became unbearable.

An inquest at Rochdale Coroner’s Court revealed that the mother-of-one had a history of depression and eating disorders that began when she was just 14. After doctors diagnosed her with anorexia, she was prescribed antidepressants, which she stopped taking in 2013 when she discovered she was pregnant with her son.

Even though she and boy’s father broke up when she was just four months pregnant, Rees, still a teenager at the time, handled the circumstances “exceptionally well,” the Metro reported.

The trainee psychiatric specialist who handled her case, Dr. Easodhavidhya Elangomo, told the Daily Mail that after the initial overdose, Rees expressed her regret “promised to keep herself safe.” She was not taking antidepressants at the time, Elangomo said.

“Due to the circumstances and the contents of her note, I am satisfied that Jade did intend the consequence of her actions,” assistant coroner Matthew Cox, who recorded the suicide, said.

---