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Sally Field, the Academy Award-winning actress, told her harrowing story of procuring an illegal abortion in Mexico when she was 17, in an Instagram video posted on Sunday.
“I’ve been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrific story,” the famed actress wrote on Instagram. “It was during a time even worse than now. A time when contraception was not readily available and only if you were married. But I feel that so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them.”
"I feel still very shamed about it, because I was raised in the 50s, and, you know, it's ingrained in me,” she said. “And I was 17. I had no choices in my life."
In the video, Field details traveling with her mother and two others to a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, where she was not provided a real anesthetic. She also details being molested by a clinic technician and then being rushed out of the facility because abortion was against the law.
Nevertheless, the abortion, as horrible as Field’s experience was, allowed her to start her career in acting. "I began auditioning, and by the end of that year, I was Gidget,” she said, referring to her role as the title character on the beloved TV show that launched her career.
“I was the quintessential all-American girl next door,” Field says, adding, “In reality, I was the quintessential all-American girl next door because so many young women—my generation of women—were going through this, and these are the things that women are going through now."
Field joins other famous women, like Stevie Nicks, Chrissy Teigen, Halsey, and numerous others who watched the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the constitutional right to abortion.
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