'Now It's Over, I Don't Feel Any Better At All’
The short film, “Incompatible,” tells the story of a pregnant-working class woman making an all-but-impossible choice.
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Hayley Standing had been trying for a baby for more than two years when she finally became pregnant. But at her 12-week ultrasound, she learned that her baby had a severe genetic disorder—Trisomy 18 or Edwards Syndrome—which would make her baby girl “incompatible with life,” according to the doctor.
Standing faced a choice: allow the pregnancy to continue to term and know that the baby would almost certainly die, or undergo a surgical termination before 15 weeks. Both options felt devastating. She chose the latter.
Four years—and a healthy pair of IVF twins—later, Standing, who is an actor and screenwriter, was finally able to start processing the experience.
As part of that process, she wrote a short fictional screenplay, which closely mirrors her own experiences. That screenplay would eventually become “Incompatible,” a 15-minute film in which we watch Annie, a woman in her 40s, wrestle with the heartache of discovering her baby is “incompatible with life.”
The film follows Annie’s pain as she makes her agonizing decision between the instinct to protect her baby at all costs, and a desire to end her suffering. It’s a surprisingly common dilemma. In Scotland, Wales and England, where Standing lives, more than 3,600 pregnancies were terminated because of fetal anomaly in 2022—more than the number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths. The emotions felt by those going through it can be complex. “I felt I wasn't allowed to be upset because I'd chosen a termination,” Standing says.
"Everyone thinks that times have moved forward so much, that it is so different now. But it isn't. Because we still can't be who we want to be without feeling judged."
Standing asked Maxine Peake to direct the film. Peake, an actor, has thrice been nominated for BAFTAs—the U.K.’s version of the Oscars—and is best known for her appearances in classic British shows like Dinnerladies, Silk, and Inside No. 9. Starring in the main role? Standing, of course. “She was the best person” for the part, says Peake. But “knowing that this was so personal, I wanted to protect Hayley as well.”
Peake has also had her own share of fertility challenges. After one miscarriage and three unsuccessful rounds of IVF, she stopped treatment. “I decided to call it a day,” she says, because “I found [fertility treatment] quite traumatizing.” But she says it’s important to keep telling stories about infertility. “It's about telling more female stories,” she says.
Standing and Peake also share a similar British northern, working-class upbringing, which is reflected in the film. It’s shot on the Yorkshire moors, a few miles from where the Brontë sisters (and their brother) grew up. It’s very bleak. There are blustery, heather-topped crags. This is real Heathcliff country.
I sat down with Standing and Peake to talk about "Incompatible," the importance of telling working class stories, and why their film isn’t being shown at U.S. film festivals.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
In your film, the main character, Annie, wrestles with the decision to terminate her pregnancy after she is told her baby is “incompatible with life.” In what ways did your experiences inspire you to make it?
Standing: I didn't process my termination at all—I went straight back to work the next day. I just kept continuing like it wasn't taking place. Only four years later did I write about it. It was the best thing that I could have done. I felt like I wasn't silenced anymore.
In the film, the character feels totally silenced, she can't talk about it because of the shame of terminating her pregnancy. I felt like I didn't have a choice—but I did have a choice. I felt like I couldn't talk about it, because I didn't want to be judged.
Afterwards, I felt I wasn't allowed to be upset because I'd chosen a termination. So I couldn't mourn. I just kind of cracked on.
You both grew up in the North of England, in working-class families. Why was it important to factor that into the story?
Peake: Film and television often tell working class stories, but these stories are not told through a working class gaze. Class is linked to culture; it's your working class identity, but it's also the culture you exist in. It can be patronized and not understood.
[In the British working class] there is a legacy of trauma that's been passed down. There are these invisible rules that exist in the working class experience. The rules and behaviors that can be quite stifling.
[As a working-class woman], you always get told “you’re really confident” or “you’re really hard” or “you’re really tough.” It’s because we're not used to being listened to. We’re not indulged.
Is the inability to talk about how you feel during infertility stronger in the working class?
Standing: [Where I’m from], no one talks about it. The only reason that I could talk about it is because I'd lived in London, where things were spoken about more freely. I live up north now and purposefully talk about IVF and the film. I'm constantly talking about it. I want to open conversations. I guess everyone just carries this shame or sadness with them.
Peake: That silence isn't just a working-class thing. But for specific families in the north of England, their attitudes sometimes mirror the landscape that we live in. It's pretty tough.
I am middle class and white. When I was going through IVF, I was told by my mother to push until I got what I wanted. I don't think everybody has that kind of presumption that they deserve to get what they want.
Peake: That's it—deserving. The medical profession is the establishment. And it's not just being working class. Add to that, being a woman of color, for example. It's a myriad of complicated factors, but if you’re from a lineage of people who always worked for other people—I'm from a line of mill workers—there's just a weird, messed up reverence to those “above” in the establishment. You can be [too] grateful. You doff your cap.
Standing: When I was told [about my baby’s genetic disorder], I remember saying “thank you.” Trying to hold it together, but also trying to impress the doctor. I wanted to compose myself, like I could take this in my stride. Take the information, and then later, I might go and have a cry. But it wasn't going to be in front of the doctor.
My mum and my grandma would always be like, “Thank you, doctor, thank you”—because doctors are [seen as] better than us, they’re much more “valid” than we are. And that's passed down.
How important is it to keep telling stories about infertility?
Peake: What really strikes me is that the different fertility journeys women go on don't get spoken about.
I didn't know anything about Edwards Syndrome [before I met Hayley], but her story is about a woman's choice—the minutiae, the complexities and the layered issues within that, and about having this heavy decision to make. In many ways, it's about the silence in women.
[In the landscape in which the film was shot], there's so much history of female silencing and tragedy that I wanted to make a connection through history. Women were murdered for witchcraft and silenced—there’s a plethora of female ghosts haunting the moors.
Standing: When I wrote [the screenplay], I was thinking about all those women—the ghosts, the silenced ones. Everyone thinks that times have moved forward so much, that it is so different now. But it isn't. Because we still can't be who we want to be without feeling judged. It's so interesting, isn't it? It's just so mind blowing that we're still in the situation where women feel like they can't openly talk about the things that they go through.
In the film, Annie says “I didn't want my baby to suffer.” How might those who are confronted with a choice like this, or don’t have a choice, find strength?
Peake: How do you navigate this when you've got the weight of the law against you? Like Annie says, she doesn't want the child to suffer either. It's inhumane in this day and age. That this is where we are, that a woman has no control over her body.
How have people responded to the film?
Standing: We’ve had a really good run at the festivals, especially in the U.K. But, interestingly, it wasn't accepted in any American festivals. I knew that in strict, religious countries, it might not be selected. It was accepted in Berlin—but not yet in America.
The film shows how a woman has a choice and how important the choice is. Those stories can't be told in places where women’s rights and choices are being taken away.
Peake: This is our job; to counteract, to kick back against the system. This is when creativity finds its place. This is when we find our meaning and our calling. This is when we have to take action.
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