Sally Field bravely opens up about her harrowing experience while getting an illegal abortion at 17 years old.
October 8, 2024- Oscar-winning actress Sally Field recently spoke out about her experience with undergoing an illegal abortion at just 17 years old.
Sally Field Abortion Story
Field, 77, recently took to her newly developed Instagram page to share her experience with getting an illegal abortion and the lack of reproductive rights that American girls had at the time.
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“I still feel very ashamed about it because I was raised in the 50s’ and you know, it’s ingrained in me. I was 17. I had no choices in my life. I didn’t have a lot of family support in any way or finances. I graduated from high school but had said ‘How about college?’, I didn’t know what I was going to be and then I found out I was pregnant,” Field said.
Field then went on to explain how she luckily had a family doctor, who was a friend of the family, that drove her and her mother in their brand-new Cadillac to Tijuana.
“We parked on a really scroungy looking street, and it was scary. He gave me an envelope of cash and then I was told to go into the building and give them the money,” Field continued.
“It was beyond hideous, and life-altering. I had no anesthetic, but a technician was giving me a few puffs of ether, but then he would take it away and my arms and legs felt numb,” Field said.
Sally Field Children
Field explained that she felt all of the pain and she then realized that the technician was actually molesting her.
“I had to figure out how can I make my arms move to push him away,” Field said.
“This absolute pit of shame and then when it was finished, they said ‘Go, go, go, go,’ like the building was on fire. They didn’t want me there, it was illegal,” Field continued.
“And fate, something glorious outside of ourselves, whatever you believe, reached in, and a few months after that, I began auditions. By the end of that year, I was Gidget. I was the quintessential All-American girl next door,” Field said.
“It’s beyond that we have to go back to that and do that to our little girls and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they’re able to give birth to a child at that time. We can’t go back. We have to all stand up and fight, and that was that lovely story,” Field continued.
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Published by HOLR Magazine
Image Credit: @sallyfield Instagram