Sharon Stone reveals secret abortion at 18, pro-life site misleadingly links it to her 'not having kids again'
Sharon Stone, in her new memoir ‘The Beauty of Living Twice’, revealed many untold details about her past. One of them was how she had to get an abortion by crossing state lines when she got pregnant at 18.
The ‘Basic Instinct’ actor revealed that her first serious boyfriend got her pregnant when she was a teenager growing up in Pennsylvania. The actress said that she was newly sexually active and did not expect to become pregnant. However, once she found out that she was pregnant, Stone and her then-boyfriend drove to a clinic in Ohio so she could get the procedure done as they had trouble finding an appointment in Pennsylvania.
READ MORE
But it was a harrowing experience for her, she said, especially once she returned home. "I was bleeding all over the place and far worse than I should have been, but this was a secret and I had no one to tell," she said. "So I stayed in my room and bled for days. I was weak and scared and then just weak."
Stone said that she burned her bloodied clothes and sheets in a barrel at school once she was feeling better, and went back to class. Planned Parenthood - the nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the US - later opened in her area, and Stone said it made a huge difference to her sexual health. "This, above all else, saved me: that someone, anyone, could talk to me, educate me," she wrote. "No one ever had, about anything."
In the aftermath of Stone’s reveal around her struggle, a pro-life website called Life News -- founded by Steven Ertelt, the president of Colorado Citizens for Life, a statewide pro-life group, and a member of the board of directors of the National Right to Life Committee -- correlated Stone’s abortion with her not having any children of her own.
In 2017, Stone revealed that an autoimmune disease made it difficult for her to carry a pregnancy to full term. She ended up suffering several miscarriages during her marriage to San Francisco newspaperman Phil Bronstein from 1998 until 2003. Thus, she chose adoption. The article ‘Sharon Stone Ended Her Baby’s Life in an Abortion, Then Found Out She Couldn’t Have Kids Again’ notes the autoimmune condition, but it also pontificates on pro-life values.
One part of the piece says, “More often than not, abortions hurt mothers as well as their unborn babies – sometimes physically and often psychologically. Abortion activists claim abortions are normal and most women do not regret them, but evidence shows the opposite.”
Stone’s words are important. Both, when they illustrate the necessity of Planned Parenthood, and when one views the opposition female reproductive healthcare has faced in the US. The expansion of abortion rights in the 1970s resulted in fierce backlash from opponents of safe and legal abortion in the 1980s and 90s. Pro-life extremists have staged campaigns of patient intimidation, and even committed acts of violence against abortion providers.
As opponents of safe and legal abortion began gaining strong political influence, things got harder. The Reagan and George HW Bush presidencies resulted in significant setbacks to the reproductive rights movement. Laws were passed that restricted federal funds from health care providers and organizations that discussed abortion with their patients. And that is a battle that continues to date.