The Celebrities Who Have Come Forward About Their Abortions, and Why

On Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court achieved what conservatives have been working at for decades: overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that guaranteed an American’s constitutional right to get an abortion. (Never mind that a majority of Americans believe that the nearly 50-year-old legislation should live on.) It didn’t take long for celebrities to uphold a tradition that goes back decades into the fight for reproductive rights: sharing their personal abortion stories, hoping to help normalize the procedure and highlight how it can be what’s best for one’s health and career. And, as the first to do so en masse can attest, doing so can come at a cost. In 1971, 343 Frenchwomen publicly signed Simone de Beauvoir’s manifesto calling for free access to contraception and the legalization of abortion. By also revealing that they’d gotten the procedure, signees such as Catherine Deneuve, Sonia Rykiel, and Agnès Varda both incriminated themselves and gained the reputation of one of “the 343 salopés,” aka “the 343 sluts.” Perhaps it’s no mistake that the country did indeed legalize abortion just a few years later.

We haven’t even hit the halfway point of 2019, but this year has already seen an unprecedented uptick in attacks on women’s rights across the United States, where the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that preventing a woman from having an abortion is unconstitutional. And yet, decades later, efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade—a move that 73 percent of Americans oppose—have reached a fever pitch over the past two weeks. In that time, Georgia legislators have passed a bill effectively banning abortion across the state. So have legislators in Alabama, though they took things up a notch, making abortion a felony, and declining to make exceptions in cases of incest and rape. And on Friday, Missouri legislators closed out the week by bringing its own effective ban on abortion, which is also without exceptions, to its final stage.

The fact that this crisis is only growing—10 states in total have made similar moves just this year—is finally starting to sink in. That’s increasingly true for the demographic with the biggest platform: celebrities, who’ve both been condemning the restrictions and making their personal lives political in order to draw attention to the issue. Many have been citing the fact that, in the U.S., one in four women will have an abortion by the time they turn 45. At the same time, as the actress Busy Philipps tweeted on Wednesday, “many people think they don’t know someone who has, but #youknowme.” Since then, thousands of women have used the hashtag, adding to the chorus of voices like Whoopi Goldberg and Jemima Kirke, who’ve shared their own stories in the past. (Goldberg was 14 when she induced an abortion herself, with a coat hanger.)

Lily Allen

“I wish people would stop posting examples of exceptional reasons for having abortions,” Lily Allen posted on her Instagram Stories six days after the Roe ruling. “Most people I know, myself included, just didn't want to have a fucking baby and that is reason enough. We don't have to justify it.”

Julia Cumming

The Brooklyn-based rock band Sunflower Bean chose to release the first in a four-part documentary series on the making of their album Headful of Sugar alongside a statement from Julia Cumming. The 26-year-old bassist and vocalist reflected on the isolation she felt after getting an abortion in the fall of 2020. “I was stunned by the range of emotions I experienced when it was over,” she wrote, adding that she eventually joined a post-abortion support group. “Women’s bodies are constantly politicized, and it didn’t feel like there was any conversations surrounding abortion touched on the nuance of loss while knowing that you had to make a decision that gives you a chance at your own life.” The band is encouraging their fanbase to donate to Mayday Health, a nonprofit aiding people in need of abortion pills.

Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler got right into it at her first night guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live in the week after the Roe ruling. “At this point, I’d probably have more rights if my vagina was an AR-15,” she told the audience. The jokes kept coming, including one about how she’s “a very strong advocate of the pull-out method”—meaning “when you pull Clarence Thomas out of the Supreme Court.” She went on to share that she has had three abortions, two of which were when she was 16. The fact that she’s made no attempt to hide as much has purportedly led to her former high school to ban her from its alumni hall of fame.

Phoebe Bridgers

Phoebe Bridgers shared her story in a concise tweet posted the month before the Supreme Court’s Roe decision. “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour,” the 27-year-old musician wrote. “I went to Planned Parenthood where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access.” She later told the Guardian that making the post was a no-brainer, just like getting the procedure. “People with good intentions [say] ‘Don’t say it was easy for you to make that decision—it was clearly really emotional,” she said. “[But] I wasn’t fucking emotional at all. Hormonally crazy! But I don’t think you should assign ‘it tore me up’ to me. No! I don’t think about it as a baby, of course not.”

Ireland Baldwin

Ireland Baldwin was one of the very first public figures to open up about her abortion post-Roe. The 26-year-old model (who is the daughter of Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin) got strikingly candid, revealing that she had an abortion after she was raped as a teen, and another years later when she was in a relationship with a partner who didn’t want to get serious. “Could I have had that baby and put that baby up for adoption?” Baldwin asked. “Maybe. Maybe not. But choosing to raise a baby without my own financial security, without a loving and supportive partner, that wasn’t going to work for me. I chose me and I would choose me again.” In conclusion: It’s your life. It’s your choice.”

Laura Prepon

A day later, Laura Prepon joined Baldwin in speaking up on social media. “One of the worst days of my life was when I made the choice to terminate a pregnancy in the second trimester,” the 42-year-old actor wrote on Instagram. “The devastating truth is that we found out the fetus would not survive to full term, and that my life was at risk as well. At the time—I had the choice.” And she sincerely hopes that others will be able to make a choice again soon: “I am praying for all of us, that we can get through this challenging time and regain agency over our own bodies.”

Uma Thurman

In an effort to call attention to the extreme Texas Heartbeat Act, Uma Thurman opened up about her experience in a Washington Post op-ed last fall. She was 15 and living far from home when she found out she’d been “accidentally impregnated” by a much older man. The 52-year-old actor wanted to keep the baby, but after talking it over with her parents, realized that raising a child at the very start of her career just wasn’t possible. “It hurt terribly, but I didn’t complain,” she recalled. “I had internalized so much shame that I felt I deserved the pain.” These days, she has neither shame nor regrets. “The abortion I had as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that caused me anguish then and that saddens me even now, but it was the path to the life full of joy and love that I have experienced,” Thurman continued. “Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”

Amber Tamblyn

“In 2012, I had an abortion,” the now 39-year-old actor and director Amber Tamblyn tweeted with the #YouKnowMe hashtag. “It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I still think about it to this day. But these truths do not make me regret my decision. It was the right choice for me, at that time in my life. I have not a single doubt about this.”

Milla Jovovich

In a lengthy Instagram caption posted around the same time, the actor and model Milla Jovovich criticized the “draconian” bills sweeping the country and detailed her firsthand experience with the hurdles of getting an abortion—particularly when it comes to mental well-being and overall health and safety. Two years earlier, she continued, she was four-and-a-half months pregnant and shooting on location in Eastern Europe when she had an emergency procedure. “I went into pre-term labor and told that I had to be awake for the whole procedure. It was one of the most horrific experiences I have ever gone through. I still have nightmares about it,” she said after noting that she doesn’t like to get political. “When I think about the fact that women might have to face abortions in even worse conditions than I did because of new laws, my stomach turns. I spiraled into one of the worst depressions of my life and had to work extremely hard to find my way out. I took time off of my career. I isolated myself for months and had to keep a strong face for my two amazing kids…the memory of what I went through and what I lost will be with me till the day I die,” she said.

“I never wanted to speak about this experience. But I cannot remain silent when so much is at stake,” Jovovich continued. “Abortion is a nightmare at its best. No woman wants to go through that. But we have to fight to make sure our rights are preserved to obtain a safe one if we need to.”

Gloria Steinem

The year after the Manifesto of 343, and the year before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, a set of American women followed suit by allowing Ms. magazine to publish their names under a section titled, simply, “We Had Abortions.” (More than 5,000 women followed in their footsteps in 2006, petitioning South Dakota’s move to ban all abortions, including in the cases of incest and rape.) Along with Joan Collins and Billie Jean King, Gloria Steinem, who cofounded the magazine, was among them; she’s repeatedly spoken out about the abortion she had, at age 22, since first hearing women share their own experiences at a “speak-out” in 1969.

Jameela Jamil

Jameela Jamil decried Georgia’s ban as “inhumane,” as well as “essentially a punishment for rape victims, forcing to carry the baby of their rapist.” The tweet turned out to be the first in a thread in which Jamil shared that she had an abortion when she was younger. It was, she continued, “the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically, and financially.” Once the expected replies started pouring in—“A LOT of men calling me a whore and telling me I ‘shouldn’t have opened my legs’ and that I should have used contraception”—Jamil once again addressed her followers to say that she did, in fact, use contraception, but “it didn’t work, it doesn’t always work. It could happen to you.” Not that, she added, she needed to justify her decision; she and other women should still have the “right to choose.”

Importantly, Jamil also spoke to the ban’s consequences outside the sphere of celebrity, where many aren’t in a position to join her in speaking out. “The anti-abortion law is also especially targeted at those without the means/ability to move state,” she added. “Women who are marginalized, poor or disabled will, as ever, be the ones to suffer the most. The wealthy will have so much more freedom.”

Amanda de Cadenet

After receiving a DM telling her, like Jamil, to “just fucking keep your legs closed,” Amanda de Cadenet posted two Instagrams about her experience with abortion. The first was an image of Gloria Steinem, whom she said inspired her to disregard her agent’s recommendation to remove the story of her abortion from her book “as it would put some buyers off.” De Cadenet doesn’t regret her decision—”I have since had the honor of hearing from many, many women who have also made the choice to end a pregnancy”—nor her initial decision to get an abortion. “I cannot imagine how different my life would’ve been had I not had the choice … I’ve been a mother most of my adult life and that choice should never be forced upon anyone due to lack of options.”

Responses quickly poured in, leading de Cadenet to post a follow-up just a few hours later. “It’s fascinating to me that I’m not hearing many men speak up in support of women. Yet, I have heard from many women who chose to abort because the man who got them pregnant threatened to leave them, beat them, shamed them and straight up harassed the shit out of them until they aborted. That’s obviously not the majority , but it’s the reality for a decent amount of women. And there are some like me, who painfully came to the decision themselves. And there are those who didn’t think twice. And many other versions,” she wrote, concluding that no matter the “type” of abortion, no one has the right to question a woman’s reasoning behind her choice.

Tess Holliday

That same day, the Mississippi-born model Tess Holliday spoke to the fact that if she were still living in the South, she might not have been able to have the abortion she ultimately did, which was “excruciating on many levels, but necessary … my mental health couldn’t handle being pregnant again & I made the best decision for ME & ultimately my family.” As to whether she regrets or questions her choice, “not at all. I’m not alone either,” she added, noting that she has two children, and the majority of those who got abortions in Alabama in 2017 were already parents. But the issue, she continued, is relevant to everyone, whether they’re parents or even women; the common misconception that only cisgender, heterosexual women can get pregnant has made access to abortions even more fraught for queer women, transgender men, and people who are nonbinary. (She also urged her followers to donate to the Yellowhammer Fund.)

Alia Shawkat

“I was 20 and my partner at the time wasn’t aloud into the united states because he is Palestinian,” the then 30-year-old actress Alia Shawkat tweeted with the #YouKnowMe hashtag. “I wasn’t ready to raise a child alone or to be a mother.”

Miranda July

The actor and filmmaker Miranda July was next to join the #YouKnowMe movement. “I was 27. My then-boyfriend, who was big on ‘pulling out in time,’ thought we should consider having it and I said something like DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH I AM ON THE VERGE OF DOING??,” she began. Illustrating how abortions have allowed many to continue their careers, she added that she started filming her first feature two years later.

Lindy West

Before #YouKnowMe, the writer Lindy West was one of three activists to launch a similar campaign that saw thousands participate with the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion, in response to one of the government’s many efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in 2015. West has written about the abortion she had in 2010 several times, and this year, a version of her story appeared in Hulu’s adaptation of her memoir, Shrill. This time, it generated quite a different response: Many praised the manner in which the abortion that takes place in the show’s first episode was treated not as a major plot point, but as a fact of everyday life.

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd, who was one of the first to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, put a face to the horrors of the 2019 bans’ lack of exception for those who are survivors of sexual assault. “Raped at 30, I terminated the pregnancy. Additionally, the rapist would have had paternity rights,” the then 51-year-old actress wrote on Instagram.

Minka Kelly

In a lengthy Instagram caption, Minka Kelly shared not only that the abortion she had when she was younger was “the smartest decision [she] could’ve made,” but also spoke more generally as to why it was the right choice for her and many other women. “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. Having a baby at that time would have only perpetuated the cycle of poverty, chaos and dysfunction I was born into,” the actor wrote, continuing into an eloquent series of questions for those who support the bans. She concluded by reminding her followers that “outlawing abortion has never stopped women from attempting it” and “women do not get pregnant alone.”

Cecile Richards

Less than a week after Cecile Richards described 2019’s wave of anti-abortion legislation as unlike anything she’s ever seen, the lifelong activist and former Planned Parenthood president reflected on the abortion she had when she was younger. “It was the right decision for me and my husband, and it wasn’t a difficult decision,” she tweeted. “Before becoming president of Planned Parenthood eight years ago, I hadn’t really talked about it beyond family and close friends. But I’m here to say, when politicians argue and shout about abortion, they’re talking about me—and millions of other women around the country.”

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj first alluded to the abortion she had as a teenager on her 2009 track “Autobiography,” not “expect[ing] anyone to hear” the verses. Five years later, she addressed the topic head-on in an interview with Rolling Stone. The decision, she told the magazine, “haunted [her] all [her] life.” Still, she has no regrets. “It’d be contradictory if I said I wasn’t pro-choice,” she continued. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”

Ali MacGraw

As for Ali MacGraw, her story—or at least the manner in which she shared it—is in a league of its own. In 1985, she appeared on the cover of an issue of People magazine alongside the word “ABORTION” in all-caps, accompanied with the phrase “no easy answers.” In writing the personal essay inside, describing her experience with an illegal abortion in her early twenties, the actor hoped to “contribute to the national debate” following Roe v. Wade.