Celebrities Share Their Abortion Stories: Laura Prepon, Cheryl Burke, Keke Palmer and More

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Celebrities Share Their Abortion Stories: Laura Prepon, Cheryl Burke, Keke Palmer and More

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. 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. 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. "Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be." Keep scrolling to see which celebrities have shared their abortion stories:

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Kerry Washington

Washington revealed in her 2023 memoir, Thicker Than Water, that she had an abortion in her 20s after a romantic incident resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. “I struggled a lot in the beginning with whether or not to include my abortion story," the Scandal alum told People in September 2023. “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.”

She continued: “This story had so much to do with my understanding of myself and the world as my career unfolded.”

As for why she decided to open up about her experience, Washington told the outlet: “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. … 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.”

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Leslie Jones

In her September 2023 memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones, the comedian revealed that she had her first abortion at age 18. “All I felt was an urgency to not be pregnant. So, I had an abortion, and it was very hard,” she wrote. “I don’t want to say it was wrong, because to this day I would do the same thing.”

By the time she reached her mid-20s, Jones had two additional abortions. “This is not a birth control method,” she recalls realizing. “When I went to Planned Parenthood, I finally learned how to prevent pregnancies and take care of myself. Thank God for those people and what they do.”

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Paris Hilton

“This was also something that I didn’t want to talk about [at the time] because there was so much shame around that,” Hilton said during a February 2023 interview with Glamour, revealing that she had an abortion in her 20s. “I was a kid and I was not ready for that.”

The Simple Life alum added that Roe v. Wade getting overturned in June 2022 made her want to speak out about her experience. 

“It’s your body, your choice and I really believe in that. It’s mind-boggling to me that they’re making laws about what you do with your reproductive health, because if it were the other way around with the guys, it would not be this way at all," she said.

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Jenny Mollen

Inspired by Chrissy Teigen, the actress opened up about the two miscarriages she's experienced throughout her relationship with husband Jason Biggs. "The first was at the beginning of our relationship and the second was during the pandemic," she wrote in a September 2022 Instagram Story. "Both times I needed a D&C [dilation and curettage] and received abortion care and both times I was so grateful to live in a country where that was possible."

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Chrissy Teigen

“Two years ago, when I was pregnant with Jack, John [Legend] and my third child, I had to make a lot of difficult and heartbreaking decisions. It became very clear around halfway through that he would not survive, and that I wouldn’t either without any medical intervention,” the Cravings founder said during Propper Daley’s A Day of Unreasonable Conversation Summit in September 2022. “Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion.”

She added: “[It was] an abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance. And to be honest, I never, ever put that together until, actually, a few months ago. …  I told the world we had a miscarriage, the world agreed we had a miscarriage, all the headlines said it was a miscarriage. And I became really frustrated that I didn’t, in the first place, say what it was, and I felt silly that it had taken me over a year to actually understand that we had had an abortion.”

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Cheryl Burke

Burke detailed an abortion she had at age 18 in a video shared via Instagram in June 2022. “I think I made the right decision [because] I wouldn’t be sitting here [and] I wouldn’t be passionately doing what I love to do if it wasn’t for the right to have an abortion, and this has nothing to do with anybody else," she said. "I have no regrets. There is no shame behind it.”

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.”

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Laura Prepon

The That '70s Show alum revealed that she had an abortion after finding out that the fetus was not viable. "One of the worst days of my life was when I made the choice to terminate a pregnancy in the second trimester," she wrote via Instagram in June 2022. "The devastating truth is that we found out the fetus would not survive to full term, and that my life was at risk as well. At the time - I had the choice. Everyone has their own story for seeking out this medical procedure and I empathize with anyone who’s been faced with this impossible decision."

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Chelsea Handler

In a June 2016 essay for Playboy, the comedian wrote that she had two abortions as a teenager. “Like millions of women, I can live my life without an unplanned child born out of an unhealthy relationship because of Roe v. Wade,” she said. “Getting unintentionally pregnant more than once is irresponsible, but it’s still necessary to make a thoughtful decision. We all make mistakes all the time.”

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Phoebe Bridgers

After news of the Supreme Court's plans to overturn Roe leaked in May 2022, the "Sidelines" songstress revealed that she had an abortion nearly one year prior. "I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour," she tweeted at the time. "I went to Planned Parenthood where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access."

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Jill Zarin

In June 2022, the Real Housewives of New York City alum told her Instagram followers that she had an abortion in her late teens. "Today is one of the worst days of my life, on this planet, as a woman, as an American, as a human being, that men took away the right for us to choose what to do with our bodies," she said in an Instagram Story after the Roe decision was announced. "I had an abortion when I was in my late teens, and my life would have been so dramatically affected. Who knows, I may have put it up for adoption and wondered my entire life, 'Was it a mistake?'"

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Keke Palmer

The Scream Queens alum shared her abortion story in May 2019 after Alabama passed a law that essentially banned the procedure. “I was worried about my career responsibilities and afraid that I could not exist as both a career woman and mother,” she tweeted. Palmer later deleted her original tweet but added another explaining that she felt abortion was hard to discuss via social media. “Twitter is sometimes too flat and too short to express intimate sentiments. Words without context, very annoying,” she wrote. “I am disheartened about hearing the news in Alabama. I feel as if women rights laws are going backwards. Individual choice is being taken. I’m truly so confused at the world [right now] and the policies that follow.”

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Busy Philipps

"It’s not brave for me to say I had an abortion at 15, because it’s a medical thing — a thing, a choice that I made, and I don’t regret it at all,” the Girls 5Eva star said during a May 2019 panel discussion at the In Goop Health Summit. “I don’t have a shame. I’m glad I didn’t have that guy’s baby. I’m OK. ... We hold on to these things as to not make men uncomfortable, but I’m ready for them to start holding it. I’m done.”

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Vanessa Williams

In her 2012 memoir, the Ugly Betty alum revealed that she had an abortion when she was in high school. "Being pregnant is the most frightening thing that happens in your life," she told Nightline in April 2012. "I knew in high school that's something that I was not prepared to do, or fight, or struggle with."

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Ireland Baldwin

Following the Supreme Court's decision in June 2022, the model said she had her first abortion as a teenager after she was raped. Baldwin chose to have a second abortion after she got pregnant in a relationship. “We were very unhappy together,” she said in a TikTok video. “And he made it pretty clear that he never wanted kids or marriage — he barely wanted to be in a serious relationship. I chose to get an abortion because I know exactly what it felt like to be born between two people who hated each other."

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Uma Thurman

Thurman had an abortion in her late teens. "I have no regrets for the path I have traveled," she wrote in a September 2021 essay for The Washington Post. "I applaud and support women who make a different 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."

The Kill Bill actress’ eldest daughter, Maya Hawke, later said she wouldn't exist if her mom hadn't had an abortion. "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."

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Nicki Minaj

In a December 2014 interview, the "Starships" rapper revealed that she had an abortion as a teenager. "It was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through,” she told Rolling Stone, adding that she got pregnant while dating her first love, who was an older man. “It’d be contradictory if I said I wasn’t pro-choice. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”

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Tess Holliday

The model had an abortion after giving birth to her second child. "My mental health couldn’t handle being pregnant again & I made the best decision for ME & ultimately my family," she wrote via Instagram in May 2019. "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."

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Jameela Jamil

“I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made,” the Good Place alum tweeted in May 2019. “Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically and financially.”

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Whoopi Goldberg

The Oscar winner wrote about her abortion in the 1991 book The Choices We Made. “I found out I was pregnant when I was 14,” she recalled. “I didn’t get a period. I talked to nobody. I panicked. I sat in hot baths. I drank these strange concoctions girls told me about — something like Johnnie Walker Red with a little bit of Clorox, alcohol, baking soda — which probably saved my stomach — and some sort of cream. You mixed it all up. I got violently ill. At that moment I was more afraid of having to explain to anybody what was wrong than of going to the park with a hanger, which is what I did.”

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Minka Kelly

“When I was younger I had an abortion,” the Friday Night Lights alum wrote via Instagram in May 2019. “It was the smartest decision I could’ve made, not only for myself and my boyfriend at the time, but also for this unborn fetus. 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."

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Rita Moreno

The West Side Story star underwent a botched abortion before Roe v. Wade made it legal in 1973. In June 2022, the Oscar winner told Variety that she became pregnant while she was dating the late Marlon Brando. “Marlon found a doctor through some friends,” she said. “He was a real doctor — Marlon paid him $500 — as opposed to something in a back alley.” After the procedure, however, she began to bleed at home. She later discovered the doctor hadn't actually completed the abortion.

“I had what they told me was a ‘disturbed pregnancy,’” Moreno recalled. “The doctor didn’t do anything really, except make me bleed. In other words, he didn’t do it right. I didn’t know it then, but I could have died. What a mess. What a dreadful mess.”

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April Love Geary

In January 2021, the model revealed that she had an abortion shortly before she met fiancé Robin Thicke, with whom she shares three children. “So, my abortion story sucks, but I’ll talk about it,” she said in an Instagram video. “Healing mentally, I just knew it was the right thing to do, so that’s what’s always kept me feeling OK about the decision.” After going to the clinic alone, Geary recalled that the person who'd gotten her pregnant picked her up and took her "straight" to the airport. “So, you know, I did make the right decision cause, like, who does that after someone gets an abortion?” she added.  

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Ashley Judd

The Where the Heart Is actress had an abortion after being raped. "As everyone knows, and I'm very open about it, I'm a three-time rape survivor," Judd said at the Women in the World Summit in April 2019. "And one of the times I was raped, there was conception, and I'm very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Because that rapist, who is a Kentuckian, as am I, and I reside in Tennessee, has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee. I would have had to coparent with a rapist."

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Meadow Walker

The late Paul Walker's daughter revealed that she had an abortion amid the coronavirus pandemic. "I too battled with the choice but in 2020, when the world was collapsing during the pandemic, I sought an abortion,” the model wrote via Instagram in June 2022. “It is a very private and personal experience — the way it should be. I was lucky enough to have a great doctor who supported me through the debilitating process — with their help, I am able to be the happy and healthy person I am today."

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Katie Maloney

In October 2021, Maloney said that she had an abortion when she first started dating Tom Schwartz 10 years prior. “I wanted it to work out, but I was just like, ‘If anything, he’s going to leave and I’m going to be a single mom,'" she said in an episode of Vanderpump Rules at the time. “I know I wanted to have kids, but I just knew that that was just not the time in my life. … Everyone, every woman, every person should be able to decide what’s best for them.”

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Joan Collins

The Dynasty alum had an abortion in her 20s, several years before the procedure was legalized in her native United Kingdom. “I had an abortion. [A child] would have been the death of my career, and I was by then 26," she recalled in a June 2021 episode of Piers Morgan's Life Stories. "Of course, I hesitated, but I realized that if I was going to have a child I was going to be able to bring the child up properly, and I believed very strongly that I’m in charge of my body. I was a feminist before the word was heard and I shall do what I felt was right for me. It would have been wrong to have [gone through with the pregnancy]. It would have ruined my life."

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Billie Jean King

The tennis icon had an abortion in 1971, two years before Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure nationwide. "Anyone seeking an abortion had to obtain approval from a hospital committee — that is, tell a panel of strangers why they believed their pregnancy would 'gravely impair' their physical and mental health," she wrote in a December 2021 essay for The Washington Post. "Arguing to a dozen or so people I had never met why I qualified for an abortion remains one of the most degrading experiences of my life. But there was still another indignity: The law required that my husband sign a consent form. Men remained in charge of not just financial matters but even the right to govern my own body."

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Stevie Nicks

The "Seventeen" singer ended a pregnancy in 1979. “If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac,” she told The Guardian in October 2020. “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 was doing a lot of drugs. ... I would have had to walk away.”

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Amber Tamblyn

"In 2012, I had an abortion. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make," the Dark Sparkler author tweeted in May 2019. "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."

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Milla Jovovich

The Fifth Element actress had an "emergency" abortion in 2017. "I was 4 1/2 months pregnant and shooting on location in Eastern Europe," she wrote via Instagram in May 2019. "I went into pre term labor and told that I had to be awake for the whole procedure. It was one of the most horrific experiences I have ever gone through. I still have nightmares about it. I was alone and helpless. When I think about the fact that women might have to face abortions in even worse conditions than I did because of new laws, my stomach turns."

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Naya Rivera

The late Glee alum wrote about having an abortion in her 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry. “It was very scary to open up about everything,” she wrote. “It’s not something a lot of people talk about, but I think they should. I know some people might read it and say, ‘What the hell?’ But I hope someone out there gets something out of it.”

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Gloria Steinem

The activist ended a pregnancy at age 22 in 1957 while she was living in England, where the procedure was then illegal. She later dedicated her 2015 book, My Life on the Road, to the doctor who performed the abortion. "Knowing that [I] had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, 'You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life,'" Steinem wrote. "Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death: I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you."

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Jemima Kirke

The Girls alum had an abortion in 2007 while she was in college. “I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be attached to this person for the rest of my life," she recalled in a 2015 video for the Center for Reproductive Rights. "My life was just not conducive to raising a happy, healthy child. I just didn’t feel it was fair. So, I decided to get an abortion.”

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Rose McGowan

“I realized I could not bring a child into my world and simultaneously change the world," the Scream star tweeted in March 2019, adding that she had been on birth control but it failed. "I do not regret my decision and it was not made lightly. If you do not want an abortion, don’t get one."

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Hilarie Burton

The One Tree Hill alum had an abortion before welcoming her second child in February 2018. "Having an abortion after my fetus died allowed for my uterus to heal in a way that made it healthy enough to carry future pregnancies," she wrote via Instagram in June 2022. "It doesn’t matter if you use the term D&C. The official word on the hospital paperwork is abortion. That’s what it was. You know what would have made that painful day even worse? If abortion had been illegal, and law enforcement inspected my body to make sure I hadn’t caused my own miscarriage."

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Brandi Glanville

During a June 2022 episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum revealed that she had an abortion at 17.

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Lily Allen

“I wish people would stop posting examples of exceptional reasons for having abortions," the "Smile" songstress wrote via Instagram in June 2022. "Most people I know, myself included, just didn’t want to have a f–king baby. AND THAT IS REASON ENOUGH! WE DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY IT." 

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Halsey

“I miscarried three times before my 24th birthday. It seemed a cruel irony that I could get pregnant with ease but struggled to maintain a pregnancy,” the “Without Me” singer told Vogue in an essay published in July 2022. “One of my miscarriages required ‘aftercare,’ a gentle way of saying that I would need an abortion, because my body could not terminate the pregnancy completely on its own and I would risk going into sepsis without medical intervention.” 

They added: “During this procedure, I cried. I was afraid for myself and I was helpless. I was desperate to end the pregnancy that was threatening my life. … My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his. Every person deserves the right to choose when, if, and how they have this dangerous and life-altering experience. I will hold my son in one arm, and fight with all my might with the other.”