Sharing their stories. Plenty of celebrities — both those with and without children — have opened up about having abortions over the years.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, tons of stars took to social media to express their outrage over the decision. “I’m absolutely terrified that this is where we are,” Taylor Swift tweeted, reposting Michelle Obama‘s statement about the court’s move. “That after so many decades of people fighting for women’s rights to their own bodies, today’s decision has stripped us of that.”
Other celebrities were motivated to publicly share recollections of their own abortions. Cheryl Burke revealed that she had one when she was 18 years old, adding that she was “saddened” by the court’s decision to overturn Roe.
“If it wasn’t for places like Planned Parenthood, I would be a mother — and I wouldn’t have been a great mother and I definitely wouldn’t be sitting here today,” the Dancing With the Stars pro said in an Instagram video. “I got an abortion while I was going through a really huge transition in my life.”
The California native went on to note that she’d been practicing safe sex by using condoms and birth control, but sometimes “s—t happens” anyway. “I was two weeks pregnant when I got an abortion,” Burke continued. “I’m happy that I made that decision. I have no regrets. There is no shame behind it.”
Uma Thurman detailed her abortion story in September 2021 after Texas passed a law banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. “In my late teens, I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man,” the Pulp Fiction actress wrote in an essay for The Washington Post. “I wanted to keep the baby, but how?”
After discussing it with her parents, however, the Oscar nominee realized that terminating the pregnancy was the better choice. “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,” she continued. “Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”
Thurman’s eldest daughter, Maya Hawke, later said that she wouldn’t exist if her mom hadn’t had an abortion all those years ago. “If she hadn’t have had it, she wouldn’t have become the person that she had become and I wouldn’t exist,” the Stranger Things star said during a June 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “Both of my parents’ lives would have been derailed if she hadn’t had access to safe and legal health care — fundamental health care.”
Keep scrolling to see which celebrities have shared their abortion stories.