Celebrities Who Opened Up About Having Abortions

Danielle Brooks

Oscar-nominated actress Danielle Brooks revealed on July 2025 in the course of the Pregnant Pause podcast that she needed to bear an abortion.

“It was actually exhausting [and] very, very troublesome to really have an abortion. It was not what I wished, however there was no means round it,” she stated, revealing it was on account of one of many medicines she was taking on the time.

She added, “I believe it’s essential to share [and] I’ve been holding that for years now, however I believe there comes a time the place it’s, like, ‘You already know what? I need to [share] this as a result of I do know that there’s some lady on the market [who] may be experiencing the identical factor.”

Kerry Washington

In her 2023 memoir, Thicker Than Water, Kerry Washington opened up about having an abortion  in her 20s. Per People, Washington gave docs a faux title to guard her privateness, as her profession was simply taking off on the time because of roles in Save the Final Dance and She Hate Me. She shared that she felt some disgrace and hypocrisy over the process, on condition that she’d labored as a sexual well being educator as a teen.

“I struggled rather a lot at first with whether or not or to not embody my abortion story,” Washington informed Individuals. “At first I wasn’t actually certain the way it match into this story of my life. However I began to really feel prefer it was actually essential for me to share this.” Washington additionally wished to open up about her story as a result of the proper to abortion is underneath assault. “It’s simply so essential to me that abortion shouldn’t be a nasty phrase, and that my abortion shouldn’t be one other factor on the listing of issues that I’m ashamed of,” she stated, including, “We’re at a second the place it’s actually essential to be telling the reality about our reproductive decisions as a result of a few of these decisions are being stripped away from us.”

Paris Hilton

In a current interview with Glamour UK, Paris Hilton shared she had an abortion in her early 20s, as a result of she “was not prepared for” all that got here with being pregnant and parenthood at such a younger age

“This was additionally one thing that I didn’t need to discuss as a result of there was a lot disgrace round that,” Hilton stated. “I used to be a child and I used to be not prepared for that.”

She additionally opened up about about her emotions on the over-turn of Roe v Wade: “I believe it will be important [to speak out]. There’s simply a lot politics round it and all that, nevertheless it’s a girl’s physique… Why ought to there be a legislation primarily based on that? It’s your physique, your alternative and I actually consider in that.”

Phoebe Bridgers

Following information of the leaked opinion that, if finalized, would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade courtroom choice, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers shared by way of Twitter that whereas on tour in 2021, she had a secure, efficient remedy abortion because of Deliberate Parenthood. 

“I had an abortion in October of final yr whereas I used to be on tour. I went to Deliberate Parenthood the place they gave me the abortion tablet,” Bridgers shared. “It was straightforward. Everybody deserves that sort of entry. “

Stevie Nicks

Shortly after the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Courtroom, Stevie Nicks spoke to The Guardian about her concern for the state of abortion entry and what it meant that she might safely terminate her personal being pregnant in 1979, simply two years after “Rumours”.

“If I had not had that abortion, I’m fairly certain there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks stated. “There’s simply no means that I might have had a toddler then, working as exhausting as we labored continuously. And there have been plenty of medicine… I might have needed to stroll away.” 

Nicks felt that the aim Fleetwood Mac was fulfilling was larger than having kids. “I knew that the music we had been going to convey to the world was going to heal so many individuals’s hearts and make folks so glad. And I assumed: You already know what? That’s actually essential,” she stated. “There’s not one other band on the earth that has two lead girls singers, two lead girls writers. That was my world’s mission.”

Sally Area

Sally Area had an abortion earlier than Roe v. Wade was handed, and referred to as the expertise “traumatic” in an Instagram video forward of the 2024 election. Area defined that she was simply 17 years previous on the time and felt disgrace when she realized she was pregnant. “I had no decisions in my life, I didn’t have plenty of household help or funds,” stated Area, who added that she’d simply graduated from highschool on the time and was nonetheless determining what she wished to do along with her life.

In the end, a health care provider who was a buddy of her household drove Area to Tijuana, Mexico to get the process performed. Area “had no anesthetic” in the course of the process and stated she was molested throughout it as properly, calling the expertise “past hideous and life-altering.” She additionally drew parallels to “issues girls are going by means of now,” after the Dobbs choice took away the federal proper to abortion. “They’re attempting to get to a different state, they don’t have the cash, they don’t have the means,” Area stated. “And it’s past, how one can return to that and try this to our little women and our younger girls, and never have respect and regard for his or her well being and their very own selections about whether or not they really feel they’re capable of give beginning to a toddler.”

Ashley Judd

Actress Ashley Judd was one of many first folks to go on report along with her allegation against Harvey Weinstein, has spoken on the Ladies’s March, and is a passionate activist for ladies’s rights and the concept that “democracy begins with our pores and skin.” In 2019, Judd addressed Georgia’s fetal heartbeat invoice and the way, as a three-time rape survivor, secure abortion entry was life-changing her her. 

“One of many instances that I used to be raped,” Judd shared, “there was conception. And I’m very grateful I used to be capable of entry secure and authorized abortion. As a result of the rapist, who’s a Kentuckian… has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee. I might’ve needed to co-parent with my rapist.”

Jameela Jamil

Jameela Jamil first opened up about her abortion in 2019 when a law was handed in Georgia making the process unlawful as quickly as a heartbeat could be detected (which could be as early as six weeks into being pregnant). In a since-deleted tweet, she referred to as the legislation “upsetting, inhumane, and blatantly demonstrative of a hatred of ladies, a disregard for our rights, our bodies, psychological well being, and primarily a punishment for rape victims.”

Jamil went on to share her personal story. “I had an abortion once I was younger, and it was the most effective choice I’ve ever made,” she wrote. “Each for me, and for the newborn I didn’t need, and wasn’t prepared for, emotionally, psychologically and financially.”

Individuals had rather a lot to say about The Good Place actor’s stance on reproductive rights. In a separate tweet, Jamil added: “Name me no matter you want. I’m not sorry about my abortion. Contraception failed me and I did what was greatest for my psychological and bodily well being on the time. And I might do it once more if I needed to. I don’t really feel at ALL ashamed, and should you had one too, for any cause, neither must you.”

Busy Philipps

Busy Philipps has been an outspoken advocate for abortion entry – even testifying earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee about why she received an abortion at age 15 in Arizona, the place current state laws make it far more troublesome to get entry to that well being care.  

“I’m so unhappy that we’ve to take a seat right here in entrance of a row of politicians and provides deeply private statements,” Philipps stated in her testimony final yr. “As a result of the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. It mustn’t matter. I’m a human being that deserves autonomy on this nation that calls itself free, and decisions {that a} human being makes about their very own our bodies shouldn’t be legislated by strangers who can’t probably know or perceive every particular person’s circumstances or beliefs.”

The actress has additionally opened up about abortion on her late-night talk show and in her guide, This Will Solely Damage a Little, and inspired girls to share their tales on Twitter utilizing the #YouKnowMe hashtag.

Chrissy Teigen

Chrissy Teigen went by means of what she initially thought was a miscarriage in 2020, when she misplaced her son Jack after experiencing being pregnant issues. It wasn’t till she was speaking along with her husband, John Legend, after the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, that he informed her she’d truly undergone a life-saving abortion.

“I by no means skilled any ache in it so I by no means considered it as being something apart from a miscarriage,” Teigen defined in an October 2024 speech in Arizona to help a right-to-abortion initiative, per CNN. “We hear the phrase abortion, we expect there’s some sort of ache with it… nowhere in these days within the hospital getting blood transfusions did I believe that I used to be in peril of dropping this child as a result of I used to be in no ache.”

Placing phrases to the expertise and sharing it overtly is a means for Teigen to combat the “stigma across the phrase ‘abortion,’” she stated. “No one needs to say abortion … I didn’t even know I had one. And that was so embarrassing to confess in entrance of your complete world.”

Amber Tamblyn

Final yr, Amber Tamblyn joined the #YouKnowMe dialog on-line, tweeting, “In 2012, I had an abortion. It was one of many hardest selections I’ve ever needed to make. I nonetheless give it some thought to this present day. However these truths don’t make me remorse my choice. It was the proper alternative for me, at the moment in my life. I’ve not a single doubt about this.”

The actress opened up after Alabama lawmakers voted to outlaw being pregnant termination and threaten docs with a 99-year jail sentence in the event that they ignore the laws, proper after state officers in Georgia signed the fetal heartbeat invoice.

Minka Kelly

After Alabama lawkmakers successfully banned abortions in 2019, actress Minka Kelly shared her #YouKnowMe story in a prolonged submit on Instagram, explaining how an abortion saved her from a lifetime of battle.

“For a child to’ve been born to 2 folks — too younger and utterly unwell outfitted — with no means or assist from household, would have resulted in a toddler born into an pointless world of battle. Having a child at the moment would have solely perpetuated the cycle of poverty, chaos and dysfunction I used to be born into,” she wrote. 

Kelly additionally famous that denying abortion entry ignores what occurs to the ladies carrying these kids, and does nothing to help moms after the youngsters are born.

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj received private about her abortion in 2014, shortly after the discharge of her album The Pinkprint.

“I assumed I used to be going to die,” she informed Rolling Stone of the time she discovered she was pregnant in highschool. “I used to be a teen. It was the toughest factor I’d ever gone by means of.” Although the singer famous the choice has “haunted” her all her life, she additionally felt it was the proper factor to do. “It’d be contradictory if stated I wasn’t pro-choice. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have something to supply a toddler.”

Tess Holliday

Whereas sharing her #YouKnowMe story on Instagram, mannequin Tess Holliday spoke to the truth that if she had been nonetheless residing within the South at the moment, she may not have been capable of have the abortion she final did. “My psychological well being couldn’t deal with being pregnant once more,” she wrote. “I made the most effective choice for ME & in the end my household. It wasn’t the ‘straightforward factor to do’, it was excruciating on many ranges, however needed. Do I remorse it or query my alternative? In no way.”

Although Holliday particularly reacted to the ban on abortions in Alabama, she famous that the difficulty is related to everybody; the widespread false impression that solely cis, heterosexual girls can get pregnant has made entry to abortions disproportionately troublesome for queer, trans and non-binary people.

Lisa Marie Presley

In her memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley revealed she had an abortion that she in the end regretted, after getting pregnant with then-partner Danny Keough. In excerpts shared in People, Presley wrote that she was “sloppy” when it got here to being pregnant prevention and didn’t use contraception, and she or he and Keough had been not sure what to do when she received pregnant.

Presley stated she was “devastated” after the abortion, and that her relationship with Keough “fell aside” quickly after. “I couldn’t dwell with myself,” Presley defined. However, due to her guilt, Presley later “deliberate and plotted and schemed” to get pregnant by Keough once more, whether or not “he wished to be part of it or not. I felt that I needed to redeem, to make amends, as a result of I nonetheless couldn’t consider I had had an abortion,” she wrote. They in the end had two kids collectively, 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 entails 4 surgical abortions. In an essay for Allure, Lipinski recalled experiencing “utter disbelief and heartbreak” when she discovered her first being pregnant wasn’t viable, and her physician suggestions she have a D&C (dilation and curettage process, often known as a surgical abortion). “Carrying an unviable being pregnant needs to be one of the disturbing experiences,” Lipinski wrote. “You are feeling pregnant… however as an alternative of understanding there’s a lightweight on the finish of the tunnel, {that a} child will come from all this ache, you’re compelled to take a seat and wait [for an abortion].”

Lipinski repeated that have three extra instances, explaining she sacrificed her psychological and bodily well being whereas struggling to get pregnant and underwent “traumatic” experiences adopted lastly by a way of “reduction” after her closing abortion. “Even when I couldn’t have the newborn that I so desperately wished, I knew that my well being was in good fingers and that I might be on the highway to restoration quickly, even when my journey by means of the grief would by no means totally heal,” she wrote.

Lipinski additionally used the experiences to take a stand for reproductive rights. “With out my abortions, and the required medical care that I required, I don’t know if I might be right here at the moment,” the Olympian wrote. “… Ladies deserve the medical entry that they need, and want.”

Maya Henry

Former mannequin Maya Henry’s debut novel, Wanting Ahead, options an abortion scene that’s “very related” to at least one Henry went by means of in actual life, she informed People in Might 2024. “If it had been as much as me, I wouldn’t have performed it,” Henry stated of her abortion. “However then additionally, if I had been to have made a unique choice, then I might’ve misplaced the individual that I cherished. There have been positively troublesome conversations about it.” 

Henry informed the outlet that she skilled issues in the course of the abortion and needed to go to the hospital, expressing frustration that her expertise was downplayed beforehand. “It was very lonely, having these males let you know, ‘Oh, it’s going to really feel like a heavy interval, it’s not going to be that painful, it’s going to be straightforward.’ However I’m like, you’ve by no means even gone by means of something like [this], so how would you realize to inform me?” Henry defined — which was why she determined to jot down about it. “I’ve seen so many individuals on-line discuss taking the abortion tablet and it was essentially the most painful factor for them. It’s simply thoughts boggling to me that you possibly can inform a girl how they’re going to really feel.”