Sally Field, 77, is sharing her abortion story ahead of the 2024 election because she believes "we can't go back" to the way things were 60 years ago, when girls and women didn't have access to safe and legal abortion or contraceptives.
In an emotional video, the Mrs. Doubtfire actress described finding out that she was pregnant when she was 17 years old. She "didn’t have a lot of family support in any way or finances." It was before the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision protected the right to have an abortion in the US. It was also during "a time when contraception was not readily available and only if you were married" and "a time even worse than now."
Reflecting on her abortion experience from 60 years ago, Sally Field said, "I still feel very shamed about it because I was raised in the 50s and you know, it’s ingrained in me." In the caption, she said she has "been so hesitant to do this, to tell [her] horrific story."
When she found out she was pregnant at age 17, Sally "had a family doctor who was a friend of the family." That doctor "drove me and his wife and my mother in their brand new Cadillac to Tijuana," she explained of the trip to Mexico in her video.
"We parked on a really scroungy-looking street," Sally continued. "It was scary and he parked about three blocks away and said, 'see that building down there?' and he gave me an envelope with money."
Her doctor told her to come back out to him afterward. Sally appreciates her doctor's "generosity and bravery" given that "he would’ve lost his license if anyone had found out" at the time.
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Sally described her illegal abortion as "beyond hideous" and "life-altering." "I had no anesthetic," she said. "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."
The experience got worse. "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?" Sally recalled. "So it was just this absolute pit of shame."
Once the procedure was over, the people involved in the procedure wanted her to leave as soon as possible, which is obviously not very comforting. But Sally could understand why they acted that way: "[abortion] was illegal."
"When it was finished they said 'go go go go go!' like the building was on fire," she called. "And they didn’t want me there."
Not long after her "traumatic" abortion, Sally Field was cast as Gidget in the sitcom that shares the same name. She "was the quintessential, all-American girl next door" on the show. But she was in real life as well, she said, because other girls and women were dealing with the same things that she was: unwanted pregnancies and lack of access to safe, legal abortions.
"I was the quintessential All-American girl next door because so many young women in my generation of women were going through this," Sally said in her video. "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."
This is why she believes "we can't go back." "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," she asserted.
In the caption, Sally noted 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 wrote. "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!!"
