“Glee” actress Naya Rivera is looking forward to the early September release of her memoir “Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up.” Why? In part, because she talks about the abortion she had while filming the popular teen show.
“It was very scary to open up about everything,” Rivera told People magazine. “It [the abortion] is not something a lot of people talk about, but I think they should. I know some people might read it and say, ‘What the hell?’ But I hope someone out there gets something out of it.”
“The only time I cried was immediately after the abortion. One of the staff asked, ‘Why are you crying?’ I don’t remember my response.”
Rivera said she had broken up with the baby’s father (now-husband Ryan Dorsey) to focus on her career — so her pregnancy came at an “inconvenient” time.
Yet in discussing how she chose to end the life of her unborn child, Rivera does not seem to consider the impact of her words on her readers — including, quite possibly, some young and impressionable young girls.
As celebrity women increasingly speak out about their abortions, their testimonies are affecting people who consider these stars to be role models. The celebs are offering a false example of the ease with which they made their decision — and perhaps the regret that comes later.
The comedian and actress Chelsea Handler, for example, recalled her abortion in a New York Times interview several years ago (and in a “Playboy” interview on the same subject, she confessed to having had not one but two abortions in the same year, when she was 16).
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“I had an abortion when I was 16. Because that’s what I should have done,” Handler told The Times. “Otherwise I would now have a 20-year-old kid. Anyway, those are things that people shouldn’t be dishonest about.”
As organizations such as Rachel’s Vineyard and the Silent No More campaign have shown, post-abortive women often experience serious emotional and psychological issues and emotions as a result of their actions.
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“The only time I cried was immediately after the abortion and one of the staff asked, ‘Why are you crying?’ I don’t remember my response,” an anonymous woman said on the Rachel’s Vineyard website. “I don’t remember where the abortion took place. I don’t remember the date of the abortion or the due date of the baby. Aside from discussing getting an abortion with one sister … I never discussed the abortion with anyone else — I was too embarrassed. I knew better than to have sex without birth control.”
Punk singer Kathleen Hanna had nothing but positive words about her experience with abortion as a 15-year-old.
“I don’t regret it at all … It was one of the best things that happened to me,” Hanna said in an interview with The Rumpus. “Not actually being on the table and having it done, but feeling like I was responsible for my own life and realizing that when I made mistakes, there were consequences and that I could take care of those consequences. I could make mistakes and I could fix them. And live with them. It wasn’t a big deal.”
At the time, Hanna worked at a McDonald’s and asked her drug dealer to threaten her boyfriend for the balance of the money she needed for the abortion.
There are countless stories like these, of women who have chosen to end the life of their unborn child — a brutal and tragic event that will remain part of their lives forever. Yet as celebrities and others tell it, all went swimmingly and it was the “right” thing for them to do.
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Today’s culture often seems to suggest that women have “no other choice” but to take the life of an unborn child if they want worldly success and career opportunities — and testimonies from celebrities sustain that false idea. Society tells women they should not be bothered with having children after they’ve had sex — yet the two have been linked since the beginning of time. It becomes quite clear, quite quickly, why abortion takes such a serious toll on a woman’s psyche.
A 2009 study from the University of Otago in New Zealand found that 85 percent of women experienced mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, after they had abortions. Women are often unable to talk about the experience until years later, when the passage of time somehow lessens the pain of their actions. The short-term feelings of guilt or regret often recede — and are masked by the use of alcohol, a lack of desire for intimacy, or feelings of depression, all similar to symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
When talking publicly about their abortions, celebrities often make light of the devastating experience — and don’t communicate the lasting effect that having an abortion has on them or their lives. So for all the young women who choose to pay attention to these celebrities — the key word is “beware.”
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