How celebrity abortion stories became a staple in the fight for reproductive rights

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In 1985, Ali MacGraw, the Oscar-nominated star of Love Story, appeared on the cover of People magazine. The headline read: “Abortion – No easy answers.” A subheadline announced that nine women, including MacGraw, had decided to “tell starkly different stories about how [abortion] has affected their lives.” Twelve years had passed since the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v Wade, which legalized abortion across the US. Thirty-seven more years would elapse until its reversal in 2022.

“The decision to have – or not have – an abortion should be a private one, actress Ali MacGraw believes,” People’s introduction reads in part. “She agreed to talk about that long-ago episode … in the hope that it would contribute to the national debate by recalling the dangers women faced prior to the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.”

MacGraw, now 83 years old, was 46 when she penned her personal essay for People recounting the abortion she had in her early twenties, before the procedure became legal. That essay is more than three decades old, and yet strikingly similar to the many abortion stories shared by other celebrities over the following years.

Recent attacks on reproductive rights, most notably with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade on 24 June, have prompted even more celebrities to share their own experiences. Many overwhelmingly note that their choice to speak out stems from their desire to call out legal challenges restricting abortion access. Their narratives have come alongside more widespread storytelling projects, such as Shout Your Abortion and We Testify, which have aimed to support people willing to share their abortion stories in efforts to normalize and destigmatize the procedure.

“Feminist activism of the 20th century mobilized the personal as political,” Elizabeth Lanphier, a clinical ethicist and assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, wrote in 2020 in Rejoinder, an online journal published by the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers.

“Storytelling is central to advocacy efforts, doing the work of consciousness-raising from rallies to contemporary internet hashtags. A strength of individual story in activism is that it centers particular stories, while holding space for intersectional difference between stories.”

In her essay, MacGraw recalls the anguish of having to find a provider through a “humiliating and terrifying” process that began “with the horror of the underground network of telephone calls.” She recounts paying $2,000 in cash (roughly $5,000 today) to a man on the Upper West Side of Manhattan who performed the procedure. She recalls fearing the gruff, unfriendly man might kill her, thinking, “I am 17 floors above the street, it is getting dark outside and who knows that I’m really here? My friend knows, but there’s plenty of time for something awful to happen.”

“I didn’t then and still don’t feel any shame about what I did, but afterward I was sad and often wondered if I had done the right thing in the eyes of God. I hoped so,” she writes. “... I don’t understand why freedom of choice is such a threat. Those people who are passionate about not having abortions should live their lives accordingly. But if a woman really believes, after all of the soul-searching, that an abortion is the right thing to do, then she should have the right to obtain one legally and safely, regardless of her financial situation.”

Celebrities have continued speaking out ever since. In 1989, Debbie Reynolds told Joan Rivers during an interview about being forced to carry a pregnancy to term even after the fetus had died at seven-and-a-half months, because abortion was illegal. “In those days, there were no abortions allowed, whethere you were ill, or whether you were raped, or whether the child died,” she said. “Which is disgusting, to think that there is those laws.” Eventually, “some board” agreed to remove the fetus, at which point it was “more dangerous than ever”.

In 1991, Whoopi Goldberg wrote about using a coat hanger to self-induce an abortion. In 2012, Vanessa Williams, by then a star on Desperate Housewives, wrote about getting an abortion in high school in her memoir You Have No Idea and told Dateline: “Being pregnant is the most frightening thing that happens in your life. I knew in high school that’s something that I was not prepared to do, or fight, or struggle with.” In 2016, Naya Rivera wrote in her memoir Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up about having an abortion in 2010, during a day off from filming Glee. That same year, Chelsea Handle wrote in Playboy about having two abortions in one year as a teenager. “We all make mistakes all the time. I happened to f*** up twice at the age of 16,” she wrote. “I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family. … I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.”

In 2018, Busy Philipps wrote about terminating a pregnancy when she was 15 in her memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little. In May 2019, she urged others to share their stories, tweeting: “One in four women have had an abortion. Many people think they don’t know someone who has, but #youknowme. So let’s do this: if you are also the one in four, let’s share it and start to end the shame. Use #youknowme and share your truth.” And before MacGraw, back in 1978, Joan Collins wrote about her abortion in her autobiography Past Imperfect.

Some have criticized a system that puts people in the position of having to share deeply personal narratives in the hope that it will help protect their fundamental rights. “Women Shouldn’t Have To Share Their Abortion Stories Online,” reads a Grazia headline published after Roe v Wade was orvetrurned, “But Their Accounts Are A Powerful Protest.” This is where the consensus has generally landed: that people shouldn’t feel obliged to share their stories, but that if they are willing and able to safely do so, those narratives can be compelling and meaningful.

Cindi Leive, the former editor in chief of Glamour and Self, articulated this sentiment in a 2018 New York Times op-ed. Leive ended a pregnancy in college; she initially discussed it but eventually “stopped sharing”. As an “extreme and often violent anti-abortion movement” gained traction in the US, Leive began to feel uncomfortable about remaining silent. For her, the tipping point was a TV show appearance she did alongside Cecile Richards, who was the president of Planned Parenthood at the time. Leive recalled that Richards received “violent insults” online for her support of reproductive rights. “Why was I letting her take the heat?” she wondered. “After all, I’d had an abortion myself.”

And so, Leive decided to share her abortion story publicly, writing: “No woman has an obligation to talk about her most personal decisions,” she wrote. “... Still, that day I felt ashamed — not of my choice, which I have never regretted, but of my silence. The decision I made 30 years ago was perfectly legal. I’m a grown woman, with a family and a career I love. Why keep quiet?”

In May this year, after Politico published a draft of the opinion that eventually ended Roe v Wade, Phoebe Bridgers was also moved to share her own abortion story, writing on Twitter: “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour. I went to Planned Parenthood where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access.”

Days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, Halsey penned an essay for Vogue titled: “My Abortion Saved My Life”, writing:  “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. 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. 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.”

Halsey, who had a son in July 2021, added: “Many people have asked me if, since carrying a child to term after years of struggling to do so, I have reconsidered my stance on abortion. The answer is firmly no. In fact, I have never felt more strongly about it. My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his.”

On Instagram, Margaret Cho said in a video in early July this year: “I’m so grateful that I was able to have the abortions – abortions, plural – I’m so grateful to have had the ones that I had. Because I don’t want children. I don’t want to breed. I love the breeders, I don’t like breeding. I don’t want children.”

Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, Rita Moreno spoke to Variety about a botched abortion she had prior to the 1973 landmark ruling, which she originally discussed in her 2011 memoir. “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,” she said.

Moreno said she had been “jubilant” when Roe v Wade was decided, and that she was left “really nervous and frightened and horrified” following the court’s decision to overturn it. “We loud mouths are going to have to get busy,” she said. “There are many of us. I’m thinking what are we going to do about this? If anything, this has reactivated us.”