This article was originally published in English
Actress Sally Field has shared her traumatic experience of undergoing an illegal abortion in Mexico as a teenager, and is asking voters in the upcoming elections to support Kamala Harris so that reproductive freedoms are protected.
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Oscar-winning actress Sally Field has posted a video on Instagram in which she remembers the “traumatic” illegal abortion she underwent in 1964 before her acting career took off.
Field wrote for the first time about abortion in her 2018 memoir ‘In Pieces,’ and is using her own experience to highlight current challenges that women face since the historic ‘Roe v. Wade’ ruling of 1973 was overturned in 2022, on the grounds that the right to abortion it was not “deeply rooted in the history or tradition of this nation.”
“I’ve been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrible story,” Field wrote in the video’s caption. “It was in a time even worse than now. A time when contraceptives were not easy to obtain and were only available if you were married. But I feel that many women of my generation they went through similar events and traumatic, and I feel stronger when I think about them. “I think that, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and for all the young women in this country.”
He continued: “It’s one of the reasons why so many of us support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Everyone, please, pay attention to these electionsup and down the ballot, in all states – especially those with electoral initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom. Please. We can’t go back.”
In the video, Field says that her family doctor took her to Tijuana, Mexicoafter the 17-year-old girl became pregnant to have an abortion. This was before the establishment of ‘Roe v. Wade’.
A “horrible” and “life-changing” experience
“We parked in a very seedy looking streetit was scary, and he parked about three blocks away and said to me: ‘Do you see that building down there? And he gave me an envelope with cash and I had to go into that building and give them the cash and then come back to it,” Field said.
The actress called the experience “beyond horrible and life-changing” and said she had “no anesthesia” during the procedure. He also said that the technician “was abusing meso I had to think how I could move my arms to push him away. “It was a real pit of shame.”
Shortly after her illegal abortion, Field says, started auditioning and at the end of the year he landed the role of Gidget Lawrence in the comedy ‘Gidget’. “These are the things women go through now: When they try to go to another state, they have no money, they have no means, they don’t know where they’re going,” Field says.
“And it goes further, how can you go back to that and do that to our girls and our young women, and not have respect and consideration for your health and their own decisions about whether they feel capable of give birth to a child at that time. We can’t go back. We all have to stand up and fight.” The US presidential elections will be held on November 5.
