Pop star Halsey speaks about her on-stage miscarriage

American pop singer Halsey has said she had a miscarriage while performing onstage, in a frank new interview about her experience of living with endometriosis. 

"I was on tour, and I found out I was pregnant," said the Closer singer, whose real name is Ashley Frangipane. "Before I could really figure out what that meant to me and what that meant for my future... the next thing I knew I was on stage miscarrying in the middle of my concert."

The 23-year-old continued: "The sensation of looking a couple hundred teenagers in the face while you're bleeding through your clothes and still having to do the show, and realising in that moment... I never want to make that choice ever again of doing what I love or not being able to because of this disease. So I put my foot down and got really aggressive about seeking treatment and I had surgery about a year ago and I feel a lot better."

Speaking to CBS talk show The Doctors, Halsey said she plans to freeze her eggs so that she can have children in the future. "Doing an ovarian reserve is important to me," she said, "because I'm fortunate enough to have that as an option, but I need to be aggressive about protecting my fertility, about protecting myself."

Halsey first revealed she suffered from endometriosis in January 2016, in a social media post about the "excruciatingly painful" condition. "I was recently diagnosed after years of suffering and finding myself doubled over backstage in the middle of my sets," she wrote at the time.

Endometriosis, which causes cells similar to those lining the womb to grow in other parts of the body, affects around 1.5 million women in the UK. It can cause severe pain and infertility, as well as bladder and bowel problems. There is no cure for the condition, though the NHS does offer a range of treatments to alleviate its symptoms.

"The thing with endometriosis is that it comes down to that doctors can tend to minimise the female experience when it comes to dealing with it," the singer told the US talk-show. Her diagnosis, she said, brought "the relief of knowing that I wasn't making it up, and I wasn't being sensitive, and it wasn't all in my head".

Halsey has released two UK top 20 albums, Badlands and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Reviewing her performance at last year's Glastonbury festival, Telegraph critic James Hall wrote that "every person present was totally committed" to her performance, praising the "brutal, brilliant clarity" of her music.