MEAWW.COM / NEWS / CELEBRITY NEWS

'This is a human issue': Whoopi Goldberg outraged after SCOTUS anti-abortion leak

Goldberg became pregnant for the first time at age 14 and self-aborted with a coat hanger.

Whoopi Goldberg, the presenter of 'The View', has delivered a vehement minute-long monologue against the Supreme Court's draught rule that would overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion across the country. Goldberg, 66-year-old, who has previously spoken out about an illegal abortion she had as a teenager, became upset after the matter was brought up on May 3, Tuesday's episode of the women-led chat show.

"You got people telling me I gotta wear a mask, or don't wear a mask, or do this," Goldberg exclaimed, raising her voice and interrupting her co-hosts' talk. "Everybody wants to tell me what to do! This is my body! My doctor, and myself, and my child — that's who makes the decision [about abortion]," Goldberg asserted boldly with her eyes welling up with tears.

READ MORE

Whoopi Goldberg issues 'sincere' apology after claiming Holocaust was 'not about race'

American streets erupt in outrage after leaked draft says SCOTUS to OVERTURN Roe v Wade

"Women, when they decide something is not right for them, they're going to take it into their own hands," Goldberg added. "We got tired of tripping over [other] women in public bathrooms who were giving themselves abortions because there was nowhere safe, nowhere clean, nowhere to go."

"It came about because people wanted people to have somewhere safe and somewhere clean. It has nothing to do about your religion. This is not a religious issue, this is a human issue," Goldberg said, referring to Roe v. Wade, which became the law of the land in 1973. "Getting an abortion is not easy," the daytime personality went on to say.

"It is a hard, awful decision that people make," the Oscar winner for "Ghost" admitted. "If you don't have the wherewithal to understand that, to start the conversation with, 'I know how hard this must be for you,' if you're starting it by telling me I'm going to burn in hell, then you're not looking out for me as a human being, whether I subscribe to your religion or not, and that is not OK."

According to an article in The Baltimore Sun in 1995, Goldberg became pregnant for the first time at age 14 and self-aborted with a coat hanger. "It was the late 60s; everybody was having sex. You had sex in Central Park; it was that free," she said in Angela Bonavoglia's 'The Choices We Made'. Goldberg also claimed in the same source that birth-control pills were not "strong" enough for her. "Three times I got pregnant with birth control." It is alleged, from Goldberg's own recollections, that she had six or seven abortions by the age of 25.

Meanwhile, Joy Behar, a co-host on the show, was outraged by the leaked Supreme Court draught, suggesting it might be the start of 'facism.' "My worry is that this is just the beginning. Next they’ll go after gay marriage and maybe … Brown v. Board of Education. They already eroded our voting rights a little bit. So I see fascism down the line here," Behar speculated. Behar, 79, went on to say that she was so concerned by the news that she woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again.

Goldberg contributed an essay to Angela Bonavoglia's book "The Choices We Made" in 1991. "The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion," in which she describes an abortion she had when she was 14 years old, before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. "I talked to nobody. I panicked. I sat in hot baths," Goldberg wrote. "I drank these strange concoctions girls told me about — something like Johnnie Walker Red with a little bit of Clorox, alcohol, baking soda (which probably saved my stomach) and some sort of cream. You mixed it all up. I got violently ill."

"At that moment I was more afraid of having to explain to anybody what was wrong than of going to the park with a hanger, which is what I did," she added with sorrow. Goldberg has recently returned to "The View" after a three-week absence.

In January, the veteran host, who has moderated "The View" since 2008, sparked anger by suggesting the Holocaust was "not about race." Her participation in the show was subsequently revoked. Meanwhile, Politico initially reported on a Supreme Court draft leak on Monday night.