Some of the people leading the pro-choice argument are women who have gone through the experience of having an abortion, especially celebrities who are sharing their own stories in an effort to highlight the importance of letting a woman choose what to do with their bodies.
Here are 11 celebrities who have spoken about having an abortion.
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1. Stevie Nicks
Photo: Kathy Hutchins | Shutterstock In an interview with the Guardian, singer Stevie Nicks opened up about having an abortion in 1979, when Fleetwood Mac had been at its peak. “If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly,” Nicks said. “I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: You know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.”
2. Busy Phillips
Shortly after Georgia passed an anti-abortion bill that banned the procedure at six weeks, before a federal judge blocked the law in July 2020, Busy Phillips shared her own experience of having an abortion. On an episode of her show ‘Busy Tonight,’ the actress said, “I had an abortion when I was 15 years old and I’m telling you this because I’m genuinely really scared for women and girls all over the country.” — Busy Tonight (@BusyTonightTV) May 8, 2019 “Every woman deserves compassion and care, not judgment and interference when it comes to their own bodies.”
3. Nicki Minaj
Photo: Tinseltown | Shutterstock In an interview with Rolling Stone, Nicki Minaj shared that she thought she “was going to die” after finding out she was pregnant as a teenager. “[Having an abortion] was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through,” Minaj said. “[It’s] haunted me all my life. It’d be contradictory if I said I wasn’t pro-choice. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”
4. Alyssa Milano
Photo: DFree | Shutterstock On her podcast, ‘Alyssa Milano: Sorry Not Sorry,’ according to The Hollywood Reporter, the ‘Charmed’ actress shared that she had two abortions over 25 years ago. “I knew at that time, I was not equipped to be a mother, and so I chose to have an abortion,” Milano said. “It was not an easy choice. It was not something I wanted, but it was something that I needed like most healthcare is.”
5. Chelsea Handler
Photo: DFree | Shutterstock In an essay Chelsea Handler wrote for Playboy in 2016, the comedian shared that she had two abortions in the same year. RELATED: Idaho’s Abortion Ban Will Give A Rapist’s Family More Power Than A Woman “We all make mistakes all the time. I happened to f**k up twice at the age of 16. I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family. I’m 41 now. I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.”
6. Naya Rivera
Photo: DFree | Shutterstock Late actress Naya Rivera wrote about her experience having an abortion in her 2016 memoir, ‘Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up,’ after her first breakup with ex-husband Ryan Dorsey. Rivera wrote that she and her mom went to Planned Parenthood wearing disguises to avoid being seen, and she had returned to work on the set of ‘Glee’ right after, according to US Weekly. “It was the worst experience of my life,” Rivera said. “It was incredibly painful — your body is basically in labor with strong, frequent contractions. I was nauseous and kept going in and out of consciousness because of the pain.”
7. Whoopi Goldberg
Photo: Kathy Hutchins | Shutterstock When Goldberg was 14 years old, she induced her own abortion, before Roe v. Wade had been passed, writing about her experience in the book, ‘The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion,’ according to BET. “I talked to nobody. I panicked. I sat in hot baths. I drank these strange concoctions girls told me about — something like Johnny Walker Red with a little bit of Clorox, alcohol, baking soda (which probably saved my stomach), and some sort of cream. You mixed it all up. I got violently ill.”
8. Minka Kelly
Photo: Tinseltown | Shutterstock In an Instagram post, actress Minka Kelly wrote about her own experience having an abortion when she was younger. “For a baby to’ve been born to two people — too young and completely ill equipped — with no means or help from family, would have resulted in a child born into an unnecessary world of struggle,” Kelly wrote. “Having a baby at that time would have only perpetuated the cycle of poverty, chaos and dysfunction I was born into.”
9. Uma Thurman
Photo: Andrea Raffin | Shutterstock In an op-ed for The Washington Post, actress Uma Thurman called her experience the “darkest secret.” “In my late teens, I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man. I was living out of a suitcase in Europe, far from my family, and about to start a job. I struggled to figure out what to do,” Thurman wrote. “We decided as a family that I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy, and agreed that termination was the right choice. My heart was broken nonetheless.”
10. Sherri Shepherd
Photo: DFree | Shutterstock While speaking on ‘The View’ with her other cohosts, Sherri Shepherd revealed that she “had a lot of abortions,” according to The HuffPost. “I swear to God, if they had shown me a picture of the fetus, I would have put my child in a lot of situations that wouldn’t have been good because I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with having a child,” she said. Shepherd had been referring to an anti-abortion law passed in Texas that requires women to “receive a sonogram from the doctor who will be performing the procedure at least 24 hours before the abortion.”
11. Rose McGowan
Photo: Cubankite | Shutterstock In response to a Twitter account that shared a statistic that one in four women will have an abortion before the age of 45, actress Rose McGowan shared her own experience. “I have had an abortion and I support this message. I am not ashamed, nor should you be. That 60% of those who choose to have abortions are already mothers says a lot — they understand more than anyone,” McGowan said, according to People. “I was on birth control and it failed. I realized I could not bring a child into my world and simultaneously change the world. I do not regret my decision and it was not made lightly. If you do not want an abortion, don’t get one. My body, my choice, my life.” RELATED: FDA Approves Mail-Order Abortion Pills — But It May Not Be The Win Advocates Are Hoping For Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.
