16 Celebrities Who Opened Up About Having Abortions
Individuals deserve bodily autonomy and the right to get a safe and common medical procedure when they need it. And although an all-time high percentage of Americans support abortion access, per Gallup, the Supreme Court voted to repeal the right to abortion in 2022.
Over the past few years, as the anti-abortion movement gained traction, a few of Hollywood’s biggest stars have made their personal lives political and drawn attention to the issue of abortion. That’s huge, because stars being vocal about their own abortion stories is invaluable in normalizing the experience and lifting the stigma that surrounds it. After all, when people have the ability to choose when and if they want to grow their families, they have a better chance of accomplishing what they want to do and living the lives they want. And seeing high-profile people share their own reproductive health choices (and the positive aftermath of having that access), it’s an overwhelming reminder that we pretty much all know and love someone who has had an abortion.
Ahead — from Busy Phillips to Nicki Minaj, Ashley Judd to Stevie Knicks — here are some of the real celebrities (who we totally love) who are changing the conversation, and helping to end the stigma, surrounding abortion.
A version of this story was published December 2020.
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Kerry Washington
In her 2023 memoir, Thicker Than Water, Kerry Washington opened up about having an abortion in her 20s. Per People, Washington gave doctors a fake name to protect her privacy, as her career was just taking off at the time thanks to roles in Save the Last Dance and She Hate Me. She shared that she felt some shame and hypocrisy over the procedure, given that she’d worked as a sexual health educator as a teenager.
“I struggled a lot in the beginning with whether or not to include my abortion story,” Washington told People. “At first I wasn’t really sure how it fit into this story of my life. But I started to feel like it was really important for me to share this.” Washington also wanted to open up about her story because the right to abortion is under attack. “It’s just so important to me that abortion is not a bad word, and that my abortion is not another thing on the list of things that I’m ashamed of,” she said, adding, “We’re at a moment where it’s really important to be telling the truth about our reproductive choices because some of those choices are being stripped away from us.”
Paris Hilton
In a recent interview with Glamour UK, Paris Hilton shared she had an abortion in her early 20s, because she “was not ready for” all that came with pregnancy and parenthood at such a young age
“This was also something that I didn’t want to talk about because there was so much shame around that,” Hilton said. “I was a kid and I was not ready for that.”
She also opened up about about her feelings on the over-turn of Roe v Wade: “I think it is important [to speak out]. There’s just so much politics around it and all that, but it’s a woman’s body… Why should there be a law based on that? It’s your body, your choice and I really believe in that.”
Phoebe Bridgers
Following news of the leaked opinion that, if finalized, would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade court decision, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers shared via Twitter that while on tour in 2021, she had a safe, effective medication abortion thanks to Planned Parenthood.
“I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour. I went to Planned Parenthood where they gave me the abortion pill,” Bridgers shared. “It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access. “
Stevie Nicks
Shortly after the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Stevie Nicks spoke to The Guardian about her fear for the state of abortion access and what it meant that she could safely terminate her own pregnancy in 1979, just two years after “Rumours”.
“If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks said. “There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs… I would have had to walk away.”
Nicks felt that the purpose Fleetwood Mac was fulfilling was bigger than having children. “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,” she said. “There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.”
Sally Field
Sally Field had an abortion before Roe v. Wade was passed, and called the experience “traumatic” in an Instagram video ahead of the 2024 election. Field explained that she was just 17 years old at the time and felt shame when she realized she was pregnant. “I had no choices in my life, I didn’t have a lot of family support or finances,” said Field, who added that she’d just graduated from high school at the time and was still figuring out what she wanted to do with her life.
Ultimately, a doctor who was a friend of her family drove Field to Tijuana, Mexico to get the procedure done. Field “had no anesthetic” during the procedure and said she was molested during it as well, calling the experience “beyond hideous and life-altering.” She also drew parallels to “things women are going through now,” after the Dobbs decision took away the federal right to abortion. “They’re trying to get to another state, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the means,” Field said. “And it’s beyond, how you can go back to that and do that to our little girls and our young women, and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they’re able to give birth to a child.”
Ashley Judd
Actress Ashley Judd was one of the first people to go on record with her allegation against Harvey Weinstein, has spoken at the Women’s March, and is a passionate activist for women’s rights and the idea that “democracy starts with our skin.” In 2019, Judd addressed Georgia’s fetal heartbeat bill and how, as a three-time rape survivor, safe abortion access was life-changing her her.
“One of the times that I was raped,” Judd shared, “there was conception. And I’m very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Because the rapist, who is a Kentuckian… has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee. I would’ve had to co-parent with my rapist.”
Jameela Jamil
Jameela Jamil first opened up about her abortion in 2019 when a law was passed in Georgia making the procedure illegal as soon as a heartbeat can be detected (which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy). In a since-deleted tweet, she called the law “upsetting, inhumane, and blatantly demonstrative of a hatred of women, a disregard for our rights, bodies, mental health, and essentially a punishment for rape victims.”
Jamil went on to share her own story. “I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made,” she wrote. “Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically and financially.”
People had a lot to say about The Good Place actor’s stance on reproductive rights. In a separate tweet, Jamil added: “Call me whatever you like. I’m not sorry about my abortion. Contraception failed me and I did what was best for my mental and physical health at the time. And I would do it again if I had to. I don’t feel at ALL ashamed, and if you had one too, for any reason, neither should you.”
Busy Philipps
Busy Philipps has been an outspoken advocate for abortion access – even testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about why she got an abortion at age 15 in Arizona, where current state laws make it much more difficult to get access to that health care.
“I am so sad that we have to sit here in front of a row of politicians and give deeply personal statements,” Philipps said in her testimony last year. “Because the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. It should not matter. I am a human being that deserves autonomy in this country that calls itself free, and choices that a human being makes about their own bodies should not be legislated by strangers who can’t possibly know or understand each individual’s circumstances or beliefs.”
The actress has also opened up about abortion on her late-night talk show and in her book, This Will Only Hurt a Little, and encouraged women to share their stories on Twitter using the #YouKnowMe hashtag.
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen went through what she initially thought was a miscarriage in 2020, when she lost her son Jack after experiencing pregnancy complications. It wasn’t until she was talking with her husband, John Legend, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, that he told her she’d actually undergone a life-saving abortion.
“I never experienced any pain in it so I never thought of it as being anything other than a miscarriage,” Teigen explained in an October 2024 speech in Arizona to support a right-to-abortion initiative, per CNN. “We hear the word abortion, we think there’s some kind of pain with it… nowhere in those days in the hospital getting blood transfusions did I think that I was in danger of losing this baby because I was in no pain.”
Putting words to the experience and sharing it openly is a way for Teigen to fight the “stigma around the word ‘abortion,’” she said. “Nobody wants to say abortion … I didn’t even know I had one. And that was so embarrassing to admit in front of the entire world.”
Amber Tamblyn
Last year, Amber Tamblyn joined the #YouKnowMe conversation online, tweeting, “In 2012, I had an abortion. 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.”
The actress opened up after Alabama lawmakers voted to outlaw pregnancy termination and threaten doctors with a 99-year prison sentence if they ignore the legislation, right after state officials in Georgia signed the fetal heartbeat bill.
Minka Kelly
After Alabama lawkmakers effectively banned abortions in 2019, actress Minka Kelly shared her #YouKnowMe story in a lengthy post on Instagram, explaining how an abortion saved her from a life of struggle.
“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,” she wrote.
Kelly also noted that denying abortion access ignores what happens to the women carrying these children, and does nothing to support mothers after the children are born.
Nicki Minaj
Nicki Minaj got personal about her abortion in 2014, shortly after the release of her album The Pinkprint.
“I thought I was going to die,” she told Rolling Stone of the time she found out she was pregnant in high school. “I was a teenager. It was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through.” Though the singer noted the decision has “haunted” her all her life, she also felt it was the right thing to do. “It’d be contradictory if said I wasn’t pro-choice. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”
Tess Holliday
While sharing her #YouKnowMe story on Instagram, model Tess Holliday spoke to the fact that if she were still living in the South today, she might not have been able to have the abortion she ultimate did. “My mental health couldn’t handle being pregnant again,” she wrote. “I made the best decision for ME & ultimately my family. It wasn’t the ‘easy thing to do’, it was excruciating on many levels, but necessary. Do I regret it or question my choice? Not at all.”
Though Holliday specifically reacted to the ban on abortions in Alabama, she noted that the issue is relevant to everyone; the common misconception that only cis, heterosexual women can get pregnant has made access to abortions disproportionately difficult for queer, trans and non-binary folks.
Lisa Marie Presley
In her memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley revealed she had an abortion that she ultimately regretted, after getting pregnant with then-partner Danny Keough. In excerpts shared in People, Presley wrote that she was “sloppy” when it came to pregnancy prevention and didn’t use birth control, and she and Keough were unsure what to do when she got pregnant.
Presley said she was “devastated” after the abortion, and that her relationship with Keough “fell apart” soon after. “I couldn’t live with myself,” Presley explained. But, because of her guilt, Presley later “planned and plotted and schemed” to get pregnant by Keough again, whether “he wanted to be a part of it or not. I felt that I had to redeem, to make amends, because I still couldn’t believe I had had an abortion,” she wrote. They ultimately had two children together, Riley Keough and Benjamin Storm.
Tara Lipinski
Tara Lipinski has been open about her fertility struggles, and in 2024, she revealed that her journey to motherhood involves four surgical abortions. In an essay for Allure, Lipinski recalled experiencing “utter disbelief and heartbreak” when she learned her first pregnancy wasn’t viable, and her doctor recommendations she have a D&C (dilation and curettage procedure, also known as a surgical abortion). “Carrying an unviable pregnancy has to be one of the most disturbing experiences,” Lipinski wrote. “You feel pregnant… but instead of knowing there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, that a baby will come from all this pain, you are forced to sit and wait [for an abortion].”
Lipinski repeated that experience three more times, explaining she sacrificed her mental and physical health while struggling to get pregnant and underwent “traumatic” experiences followed finally by a sense of “relief” after her final abortion. “Even if I couldn’t have the baby that I so desperately wanted, I knew that my health was in good hands and that I would be on the road to recovery soon, even if my journey through the grief would never fully heal,” she wrote.
Lipinski also used the experiences to take a stand for reproductive rights. “Without my abortions, and the necessary medical care that I required, I don’t know if I would be here today,” the Olympian wrote. “… Women deserve the medical access that they want, and need.”
Maya Henry
Former model Maya Henry’s debut novel, Looking Forward, features an abortion scene that’s “very similar” to one Henry went through in real life, she told People in May 2024. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have done it,” Henry said of her abortion. “But then also, if I were to have made a different decision, then I would’ve lost the person that I loved. There were definitely difficult conversations about it.”
Henry told the outlet that she experienced complications during the abortion and had to go to the hospital, expressing frustration that her experience was downplayed beforehand. “It was very lonely, having these men tell you, ‘Oh, it’s going to feel like a heavy period, it’s not going to be that painful, it’s going to be easy.’ But I’m like, you’ve never even gone through anything like [this], so how would you know to tell me?” Henry explained — which was why she decided to write about it. “I’ve seen so many people online talk about taking the abortion pill and it was the most painful thing for them. It’s just mind boggling to me that you could tell a woman how they’re going to feel.”
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