‘We can’t go back:’ Sally Field details illegal abortion as she fights for Kamala Harris
Reproductive rights are on the ballot right now and Sally Field is determined to fight for them. To that end, she detailed a harrowing illegal abortion she underwent in 1964, before Roe v Wade.
Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022 thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court justices, and women are already dying as a result. Field is as angry as the rest of us, and so she decided to share her abortion story to as wide an audience as possible.
Field posted a video to Instagram on Saturday and wrote alongside it, “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. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country.”
She went on, “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!!”
From there, people could hear her story as recounted in the video.
Trigger warning: discussion of sexual assault and medical trauma.
Field explained that she felt “shamed” seeking an abortion, because it was “ingrained” in her that it was wrong. But she wished to terminate her pregnancy, so her family doctor drove her and her mother to “a scroungy-looking street” in Tijuana, Mexico.
There, she said, her doctor “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.”
What happened after that was, Field said, “hideous and life-altering.” She was given “no anesthetic”—a thought that sends shudders down the spine—and she was even sexually assaulted in the middle of it.
“Then the situation turned darker. 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.”
It was a horrible, horrible thing for Field to have to go through—it’s painful just to hear about—and Field is determined that the United States should never return to that point. That is why she, like many others in Hollywood and beyond, are voting for Kamala Harris.
Field requested in her Instagram post that other people tell their abortion stories in the comments, and plenty of people did. It was a snapshot of the agony women faced back when abortion was illegal. Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance want to take us back to that time—and the results of this would be absolutely beyond devastating.
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