From Alicia Vikander to Sharon Stone and Rita Moreno: How celebrities broke the taboo of talking about abortion | Society

The Supreme Court’s late May decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case upholding the constitutional right to choose an abortion, has sparked numerous demonstrations across the country. These included the arrest of several US Congressmen – including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – for civil disobedience following a protest outside the Supreme Court, as well as turning the bird over messages in support of women’s reproductive rights on July 4 (Independence Day). The ruling has also unearthed the stories and confessions of numerous actresses and singers who have had abortions and/or miscarriages. So far, only a few celebrities have dared to share their experiences publicly. Today they do so in solidarity with those who are going through or have already experienced similar situations, now in the context of a country that no longer guarantees safe procedures for millions of women.

Most recently, Swedish actress Alicia Vikander went public about her miscarriage. “I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Am I going to talk about this?’ But I think it’s universal and so many women go through similar things.” The 33-year-old Ex Machina actress suffered an “extremely painful” miscarriage before having her first child with fellow actor Michael Fassbender in 2021. “We have a child now, but it’s taken some time,” the Tomb Raider star admitted in an interview with British newspaper The Times on Sunday July 24.

Sharon Stone also recently told the public that she suffered nine miscarriages. When People magazine took to Instagram to catch up on Peta Murgatroyd’s recent Dancing with the Stars interview about her miscarriage, the Basic Instinct star opened up about how she’s been struggling with her own pregnancy loss. The actress lamented that “[w]e as women have no forum to discuss the depth of this loss.” Stone – now a mother of three adopted children, Quinn Kelly, Laird Vonne and Roan Joseph – continued: “[pregnancy loss] is no small thing, physically yet [sic] emotionally, but we feel like it’s something we have to endure alone and secretly with a kind of sense of failure. Instead of getting the much-needed [sic] Compassion and empathy and healing that we need so much.”

Contrary to the taboo that once surrounded miscarriages, for women grieving this loss it is beneficial and therapeutic to talk about it and let society see it as natural. “It’s very important that they talk to each other, especially in a society like ours where the dominant idea is that personal success comes from getting whatever you want as soon as possible,” says the psychotherapy specialist Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Lucía Torres Jiménez specializes in pregnancy and perinatal bereavement and has extensive experience as a perinatal psychiatrist at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid. “To learn that even people who embody the image of absolute success also experience loss and pain groundes us in reality,” adds Torres, who is also medical director of the TranquilaMente Center for Mental Health.

Abortions save lives

Outrage in the United States over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade after serving as a precedent for nearly 50 years for a woman’s right to choose — and the step backwards it brought — has actresses like Rita Moreno , 90, prompted to remember her abortion decades ago. It happened years before Roe vs. Wade, a decision that was met with much acclaim. “I’m really nervous and scared and appalled that this is happening. I can’t believe some of these people are telling us what to do with our bodies,” she said in an interview with Variety magazine after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision.

The 1962 Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story was forced to have an abortion by her then-partner Marlon Brando. “He was a real doctor — Marlon paid him $500 — as opposed to something down a back alley,” the actress recalled in her 2011 memoir. That procedure turned out to be a disaster, leaving sequelae that required a second surgery. “Marlon took me to the hospital. I had, as they told me, a “faulty pregnancy”. The doctor didn’t really do anything 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 terrible mess,” she said. Her toxic relationship with Brando made her contemplate suicide. After they separated, Moreno married cardiologist Leonard Gordon, with whom she had their only child, Fernanda.

Debbie Reynolds’ traumatic experience also resurfaced after the court ruled to set aside Roe vs. Wade. In a 1989 interview with Joan Rivers, the Singin’ in the Rain star — and Moreno’s contemporary — revealed that as a mother of two (Carrie and Todd Fisher), she became pregnant with her third child, who was born when she was seven months in the womb died pregnancy. “Back then, abortions weren’t allowed if you were sick, if you were raped, if the child died. Which is disgusting to think that there [are] these laws,” Reynolds explained. She was denied an abortion and her doctors advised her to wait before giving birth to her stillborn baby. Ultimately, however, the doctors had to intervene and remove the fetus from Reynolds’ body because her life was in danger. “They couldn’t help it because now the kid is in the sack, but of course all the poisons and everything would have killed me after such a long time,” she revealed.

Before welcoming a son, Ender Ridley, with partner Alev Aydin in July 2021, the pop star suffered three miscarriages before the age of 24; The experience was traumatic and prompted her to rewrite her will. Halsey is clear on her position on voluntary abortion. “My abortion saved my life and made way for my son. Every person deserves the right to choose when, if and how to have this dangerous and life-changing experience. I will hold my son in one arm and fight with the other with all my might,” the letter concluded.

Many singers and actresses have also shared their experiences of terminating pregnancy as a teenager, including Mila Jovovich, Ashley Judd, Ireland Baldwin, Alissa Milano, Lilly Allen, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Grey… Thurman wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that “[it] hurt terribly, but I didn’t complain. I had internalized so much shame that I felt I deserved the pain.” The Kill Bill star decided to terminate her pregnancy in her late teens in Germany, a decision she made with her family. “Having an abortion as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that scared me then and still saddens me today,” she said. The Pulp Fiction star now has three children, Maya, 23; Levon Roan, 19; and Luna, nine, who she described as her “pride and joy.” As Lucía Torres explains: “Many teenagers report that they suffer greatly when they have an abortion, even if it was a voluntary decision. It is painful for them to remember how they made the decision, how they dealt with financial difficulties, their partner’s position at the time and its impact on their relationship, the loneliness and fear of seeing themselves in the operating room, or her uncontrollable crying without understanding why . Often the story reveals a traumatic component. They’re talking about what the smell of this room is like, or something [other] Detail, is burned into her memory and causes emotional or physical reactions like nausea every time she brings something back to that place.”

Like Uma Thurman, Jennifer Gray has had a tough time. In her memoir Out of the Corner, the Dirty Dancing star – a film in which one of the dancers had an illegal abortion in the 1960s – described her life as an excessive and rebellious youth and her abortion at the age of 16. No teenager should swim in such dark waters,” 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 a lack of seriousness. I always wanted a child. I just didn’t want a kid when I was a teenager,” the actress explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times when her autobiography was published. At 41, Gray gave birth to their daughter, Stella Gregg, 20, with then-husband Clark Gregg. “This is such a serious decision. And it stays with you…[Overturning Roe] is just so fundamentally wrong, and it beckons all women to rise up and speak out now because we have assumed since 1973 that our decision was safe and would never be reversed.”

All of the experiences celebrities have shared involve guilt and trauma, but they also reflect a commitment to continue advocating for women’s reproductive rights. Feminist and activist Gloria Steinem promised Dr. John Sharpe, the doctor who performed her abortion in London in 1957, that she would do as she pleased with her life. As she wrote when dedicating her book My Life on the Road to the doctor, “I did my best.”