Warning: This article contains discussions of abortion and sexual assault that some readers may find upsetting
Actress Sally Field has bravely opened up about her 'traumatic' abortion experience ahead of the upcoming US election, with her urging voters to back Kamala Harris.
The star, best known for her roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Forrest Gump and Norma Rae, has spoken out about the illegal abortion as the US 2024 presidential election nears.
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The Oscar winner shared her story on the incident which happened 60 years ago to Instagram, explaining what life was like for many women before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
Before it was overturned in 2022, it had been active for 50 years which saw women be allowed the right to decide what they could do with their own bodies when it came to reproductive health.
A lot of these times, this included the medical abortion procedure, which could provide life-saving measures to pregnant women. It could also allow women the opportunity to live life without children, be it for financial reasons, health or overall preference.
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Field, now 77, shared the video on October 6 and detailed how, at 17-years-old, she found out she was pregnant.
She explained: "I still feel very shamed about it because I was raised in the '50s, and it's ingrained in me. I had no choices in my life, I didn't have a lot of family support or finances. I graduated high school but no one ever said, 'How about college?' Nothing. I didn't know what I was gonna be.
"And then I found out I was pregnant."
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Field shared how she ‘had a family doctor who was a friend of the family, and he drove me and his wife and my mother, in their brand-new Cadillac, to Tijuana'.
She added: "And 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.”
She called the experience 'beyond hideous and life-altering’ and that she ‘had no anaesthetic’ during the procedure.
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Field shared: "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 weird, but I felt everything — how much pain I was in.”
Unfortunately, this back-alley abortion went from bad to worse when the technician carrying out the procedure used her vulnerable state to assault her.
She added: “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.
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"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!"
Thanks to her abortion, Field was able to live her life free of constraints and went on to grow up without being a teenage mother.
Field said that it was only ‘a few months after that, I began auditions’.
“I didn't have an agent; I wasn't really an actor. I'd been doing it in high school constantly. And I began auditioning. And by the end of that year, I was Gidget. I was the quintessential, all-American girl next door."
The actress went on to share the similarities of what she went through, compared to now in the US where abortion is largely illegal.
She said: “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.
"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."
"We can't go back. We have to all stand up and fight. And that was that lovely story.”
In the caption of her video, Field called on voters of the election to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz or 'those with ballot initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom'.
For help, support and advice about abortion, contact the British Pregnancy Advisory Service on 03457 30 40 30, 7am to 6pm Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm on Saturdays, and 9.30am to 2.30pm on Sundays.
And if you wish to speak to someone in confidence, contact The Survivors Trust for free on 08088 010 818, available 10am-12.30pm, 1.30pm-3pm and 6pm-8pm Monday to Thursday, 10am-12.30pm and 1.30pm-3pm on Fridays, 10am-12.30pm on Saturdays and 6pm-8pm on Sundays.
Britt Jones