Repeal at the end of May Roe vs. Wade, the court case which dedicated in the United States the right to termination of pregnancysparked widespread protests in the streets of the country – including the arrest of several members of the United States Congress, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezfor civil disobedience after a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court—, combs and 4th of July messages for women’s reproductive rights, Independence Day. But it has also sparked a series of stories and confessions from many actresses and singers who have had abortions, either naturally or after a conscious decision. Until now, few (if not very few) celebrities had dared to share their experience publicly and today they do so in solidarity with those who are going through or have already gone through the same situation, especially in a country that no longer guarantees a procedure safe for millions of women.
“I stopped to think, ‘Am I going to talk about this? Many women go through similar things. The last to go public with her abortion was Swedish actress Alicia Vikander. The interpreter of Ex-Machina33, suffered an ‘extreme and painful’ pregnancy termination before have their first child in 2021 with actor Michael Fassbender. “We have a son now, but it took us a long time,” confessed the protagonist of grave robber in an interview given on Sunday July 24 to the British newspaper The temperature.
The one who also recently made public her nine miscarriages was Sharon Stone. the protagonist of primary instinct explained how he handled this situation through a comment in an Instagram post from the magazine Peoplewhich told the story of the dancer Peta Murgatroyd, known for her participation in the American television show dance with the stars, which was about the recent abortion she had while her partner was in Ukraine. “We as women don’t have a forum to discuss the depth of this loss,” said the actress, who is an adopted mother of three: Quinn Kelly, Laird Vonne and Roan Joseph.
“It’s not a small thing, neither physically nor emotionally, but they make us feel that it’s something we have to endure alone and secretly with a kind of sense of failure, instead of receiving compassion, l empathy and healing that we so badly need,” Stone added. Talking about it and that society perceives it as something natural, against the taboo that has hitherto surrounded abortion, is beneficial and therapeutic for women who mourn this loss. “It’s very important that they express themselves, especially in a society like ours, where the idea prevails that personal success is based on obtaining everything you want and, if possible, immediately, with one click.”, contextualizes Lucía Torres Jiménez, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and expert in gestational and perinatal bereavement with extensive experience as a perinatal psychiatrist at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital (Madrid) and as Medical Director of the TranquilaMente Mental Health Center. “Finding out that even those people who represent the image of absolute success are also dealing with situations of loss and pain puts us in the realm,” he adds.
life-saving abortions
Outrage over the setback that the US abortion ban has caused, nearly 50 years after it was approved, has also provoked actresses such as Rita Moreno, 90 years oldremember the termination of pregnancy she experienced decades ago, years before the approval of Roe vs. Wade, law which then received, said the interpreter, with great joy. “I am really nervous, scared and horrified that this is happening. I can’t believe some of these people tell us what to do with our bodies.” a magazine interview Variety after the Supreme Court decision.
Winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story in 1962 was forced to have an abortion by her partner at the time, Marlon Brandon. “He was a real doctor, Marlon paid him $500, unlike those you find in an alley,” the actress said in her 2011 memoir of the procedure, which turned out to be a disaster and left him with sequelae that required a second operation. “Marlon took me to the hospital. The doctor didn’t do anything but make me bleed. In other words, he didn’t do well. I didn’t know it then, but I could have died. What a disaster. What an awful mess!” Broke this toxic relationship, which led the artist to even think about suicidemarried cardiologist Leonard Gordon, with whom she had her only daughter, Fernanda.
Another traumatic experience that increased after the repeal of Roe vs. Wade It was that of a contemporary actress of Moreno, Debbie Reynolds. the star of Sing in the rain, already mother to Carrie and Todd Fisher, told Joan Rivers in a 1989 interview how she became pregnant with her third child, who would die after seven months of gestation. “At that time, abortions were not allowed, if you were sick, if you had been raped, if the child was dead… It was the law. It didn’t matter,” explained Reynolds, who was denied an abortion: the doctors’ recommendation was to wait to give birth to her now deceased baby. However, the doctors had to force the situation and remove the fetus from Reynolds’ body, because the artist’s life was in danger.” They couldn’t leave it anymore because the child was in the bag, but, of course, after so long, all the poisons and everything would have killed me,” he revealed.
Like Reynolds and Moreno, and now with a generational leap, Halsey the singer is another American who shared how abortion “saved her life,” in her case with an open letter published in vogue last July 1. “One of my miscarriages required ‘follow-up’, a sweet way of saying I would need an abortion because my body couldn’t terminate the pregnancy on its own and I was at risk of sepsis without medical intervention” , explained the young woman of 27 years. artist years.
The pop star, who with partner Alev Aydin welcomed son Ender Ridley in July 2021, suffered three miscarriages before turning 24. Despite the traumatic experience, which even led her to rewrite her will, is clear on her position on the voluntary termination of marriage. of pregnancy. “He saved my life and made way for my son to have his. Each person deserves the right to choose when and how to have this dangerous and life-changing experience. I will hold my son with one arm and fight with all my might with the other.”
Among the singers and actresses who decided as teenagers, voluntarily, to terminate a pregnancy and who today spoke about their experience, there is also a long list: Mila Jovovich, Ashley Judd, Ireland Balwin, Alissa Milano, Lilly Allen, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Grey… “It hurt terribly, but I wasn’t complaining. I had internalized so much shame that I felt I deserved the pain,” Thurman explained in an opinion column. In the newspaper The Washington Post. the protagonist of Kill Bill decided to terminate a pregnancy in her late teens during a stay in Germany, a decision she made with her family. “It was the hardest decision of my life, something that caused me anguish at the time and still saddens me today,” he said. the protagonist of pulp Fiction He has three children, Maya, 23, and Luna, nine, and son Levon Roan, 19, whom he described as his “pride and joy”. “There are adolescent girls who report a lot of suffering in the abortion process, even if it is a voluntary decision. They painfully remember how they made this decision, how they coped with economic difficulties, their partner’s position at the time and how it affected their relationship: loneliness and the fear of seeing each other at operating room, or the uncontrolled crying that arose in that moment without understanding why. Many times the story reveals a traumatic component, as they talk about how the smell of that room or certain details of it were etched in their memory, causing emotional or physical reactions such as nausea whenever something connects them to that scene,” explains Lucia Torres.
Jennifer Grey’s experience was as tough as Thurman went through. the protagonist of dirty dance —a film in which one of the dancers had a clandestine abortion in the 1960s—she detailed in her memoir, out of the corner, her life of excess and rebellious adolescence, in addition to her abortion at 16. “No teenage girl should swim in such dark water…” she wrote. “I wouldn’t have my life. I wouldn’t have had the career I had, I wouldn’t have had anything. And it wasn’t to not take him seriously. He always wanted a son I just didn’t want it when I was a teenager,” the actress explained in a newspaper interview. Los Angeles Times following the publication of his biography. At 41, Gray would give birth to her daughter, Stella Gregg, now 20, with then-husband Clark Gregg. “It’s a very serious decision and it stays with you. But scrapping the law is fundamentally wrong. We need to get all women to stand up and speak out now because we’ve assumed since 1973 that our election was safe and would never be overturned.”
In all the experiences shared by these celebrities, there is guilt and trauma, but also a deep sense of continuing to defend women’s reproductive rights. As feminist and activist Gloria Steinem would write to Dr John Sharpe, the doctor who in London in 1957 was going to give her an abortion, to whom she dedicates her book my life on the road and to whom he promised that he would do with his life what he wanted: “I did the best I could”.