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Sally Field has spoken about the “traumatic” illegal abortion she underwent as a teenager in 1964.
The 80 For Brady star, 77, had the procedure nine years before Roe v Wade introduced a constitutional right to abortion, which was overturned by the supreme court in June 2022.
Field, who first revealed her abortion in her 2018 memoir In Pieces, said she had “no choices” when it came to terminating her pregnancy and urged her fans to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the forthcoming presidential election to “protect reproductive freedom”.
Writing on Instagram, Field said: “I’ve been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrific story. 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,” she continued. “I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country.”
The Mrs Doubtfire star explained: “It’s one of the reasons why so many of us are supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Everyone, please, pay attention to this election, up and down the ballot, in every state – especially those with ballot initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom. PLEASE. WE CAN’T GO BACK!!”
Field admitted she still feels “very ashamed” about her illegal abortion because she “was raised in the Fifties and it’s ingrained in me”.
The actor detailed how her family doctor had taken her to Tijuana, Mexico after she became pregnant at 17 in order to perform the abortion.
“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,” Field said.
The procedure was “beyond hideous and life-altering” and she “had no anaesthetic”, she added.
Field continued: “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 [and] weird, but I felt everything — how much pain I was in.
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“Then the situation turned darker. I realised 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.”
Field thanked her doctor for his “generosity and bravery” in risking his licence by taking her to Mexico. She recalled that before that trip she had never left her home state or travelled on an aeroplane.
A matter of months after the illegal abortion, the star began auditioning for acting jobs and secured her breakout role in the sitcom Gidget in 1965.
“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,” Field said.
“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.”
Conservative Supreme Court justices who Donald Trump appointed while in office were the key force behind the high court overturning the constitutional protections for abortion rights in 2022.
The Supreme Court decision led to a wave of new abortion bans across the country. The procedure is now banned with few exceptions in 14 states and severely restricted in others.
Since then, pregnant women across the country have faced life-threatening medical complications under the new healthcare regime.
The Harris campaign has referred multiple times to the story of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old from Georgia who died in 2022 amid complications from an abortion as doctors waited 20 hours before operating, a death her family blames on Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, which was passed the same year.
“Understand what a law like this means, these kinds of laws under Trump abortion bans, it means doctors may have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take any action,” the vice president said.
“Nobody wants that,” she added. “This is one example of what is happening around our country right now, and this is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect.”
If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story, the NHS signposts to support through this page. Or you can speak to someone in confidence at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK’s largest abortion provider, by calling 03457 30 40 30 or emailing info@bpas.org
