Sally Field , two-time Oscar winner and pretty universally beloved celebrity, took to Instagram on October 6, 2024 to share a harrowing story of being 17 and pregnant just before landing her breakout role as Gidget.
Field, 77, recalled living in a time before the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that affirmed the right to abortion in the United States (which, as we know, has since been overturned ) .
"I had no choices in my life, I didn't have a lot of family support or finances…And then I found out I was pregnant,” she said, adding that "I still feel very shamed about it because I was raised in the '50s, and it's ingrained in me."
Without any safe, legal abortion options, 17-year-old Field relied on the help of a doctor who was a friend of her family to take her to get an illegal abortion.
“He drove me and his wife and my mother, in their brand-new Cadillac, to Tijuana." This experience would end up being "beyond hideous and life-altering," for Field and her family.
“We parked on a really scroungy-looking street, it was scary and he parked about three blocks away and said, 'See that building down there?' And he gave me an envelope with cash and I was to walk into that building and give them the cash and then come right back to him," she said.
Field received "no anesthetic" during the procedure. However, "There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether but he would then take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb weird, but I felt everything — how much pain I was in.”
This is when “the situation turned darker,” Field shared. “I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame. And then, when it was finished, they said, 'Go go go go go!', like the building was on fire. And they didn't want me there, you know, it was illegal!"
This all happened before Field’s life had begun, so to speak. "I'd never been out of the state, I'd never been on an airplane,” she said. And while she commended the doctor who helped her for his "generosity" and "bravery," as "he would've lost his license if anyone had found out,” she suffered nonetheless.
Still, after that, “fate, you know, something glorious outside of ourselves, whatever you believe, reached in," Field recalled. "And a few months after that, I began auditions. I didn't have an agent; I wasn't really an actor. I'd been doing it in high school constantly. And I began auditioning. And by the end of that year, I was Gidget. I was the quintessential, all-American girl next door."
A Sally Field with Don Porter and Betty Conner, 1965. upload.wikimedia.org
And here Fields really drove the point home, saying, "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 — when they're trying to get to another state, they don't have the money, they don't have the means, they don't know where they're going," she added. "And it's beyond, how you can go back to that and do that to our little girls and our young women, 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,” she concluded, quipping, “and that was that lovely story."
The video quickly received a flood of comments from people thanking her for her honesty.
“Sally, thank you for sharing. As Brené Brown says, shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces. I see you, I honor you. Thank you for your voice in a time such as this,” one person wrote.
Another added, “Wow. It takes incredible courage to share something so intimate & painful.”
Many were compelled to share their own similar stories.
“I know my Mom had to go through something similar and her husband, my Dad took her. They could not afford another child. Reminds me of the Muriel Rukeyser quote, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth of her life? The world would crack open. Thank you for being one of those women who tell the truth.”
“I can’t believe I’m still telling my mother’s story! She’s been gone more than 20 years now, and would be appalled that we are fighting for this again! My mother, Mary Elizabeth Eyre-Letts, had an illegal back alley abortion in 1940s in Chicago. The guy would not marry her or pay, and the procedure was several hundred dollars – a lot at that time. To add another layer, she was legally blind and came to Chicago from a farm to attend a blind school. She said she ate scrambled eggs for weeks for lack of money to eat; and became anemic for loss of blood.”
“I went with a few friends to get legal abortions when we were younger. The young men that got them pregnant did not go with them. I, their gay friend, went with them. I see so many women sharing their stories of abortion, and I see zero men talking about how abortion saved their lives; The boys that got to go to university and pursue their dreams without being young fathers, the young men who didn’t have to pay child support payments to the woman that they were sexually active with, but not emotionally invested in. So many men are able to have the lives that they dreamed of because the woman they impregnated had access to a safe and legal abortion. And I want them to start talking about it.”
In a lengthy caption, Fields admitted she was at first “hesitant” to share her experience, but finally came to the conclusion that, “so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country."
Clearly, her intuition was spot on.
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