Sally Field is speaking about the “horrific” experience of undergoing an illegal abortion as a teenager in hopes of encouraging voters to support Vice President Kamala Harris in next month’s presidential election.
The “Steel Magnolias” actor became visibly emotional in a video shared Sunday to Instagram in which she acknowledged still feeling “very shamed” about the procedure, which took place before she landed what was to be her breakout role on the comedy series “Gidget.”
“I was 17. I had no choices in my life,” Field explained. “I didn’t have a lot of family support in any way or finances. I’d graduated from high school, but no one ever said, ‘How about college?’ I didn’t know what was going to be, and then I found out I was pregnant.”
Accompanied by her mother and a family doctor, Field said, she traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, to undergo the abortion, which she paid for in cash.
“It was beyond hideous and, you know, life-altering,” she said. “I had no anesthetic.” During the procedure, she realized that a technician had begun “molesting” her: “It was just this absolute pit of shame.”
Jamie McCarthy via Getty Images
Field also likened her story to that of many young women today who are living in states that have restricted access to abortion in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“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 said.
The Academy Award winner, 77, previously disclosed the abortion in her 2018 memoir, “In Pieces.” In revisiting the experience now, she said, she hopes to motivate viewers to “stand up and fight” by ensuring former President Donald Trump, who has expressed extreme views on abortion rights and wants decisions made on the state level, is defeated in November.
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“It’s one of the reasons why so many of us are supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” she wrote on Instagram alongside the video. “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 quickly endorsed Harris in July, just one day after President Joe Biden announced that he would no longer seek reelection this fall.
“I am so grateful to Joe Biden for his extraordinary 54 years serving this country. The decision he made to step down is heroic and that of a great man,” she told Variety at the time. “And, as a working woman, a mother and grandmother to a very diverse group, I support the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris with my whole 77-year-old heart.”