Oct
Sally Field Reflects on ‘Traumatic’ Illegal Abortion Before Her Role as Gidget
Sally Field is candidly discussing her past experience with abortion to advocate for reproductive rights, revealing the lingering shame she feels from her upbringing in the 1950s.
The 77-year-old Oscar-winning actress shared her story about undergoing an illegal abortion before the Roe v. Wade decision at the age of 17. This life-changing event took place just months before she starred in the 1965 ABC sitcom Gidget and was deeply traumatic for her, as she recounted in an Instagram video posted on Sunday.
Reflecting on her circumstances at the time, Field said, “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 suggested, ‘How about college?’ Nothing. I didn’t know what I was going to be, and then I found out I was pregnant.”
Field credited the “bravery” and “generosity” of her family doctor, a family friend, for facilitating her care. She recounted how her doctor, along with his wife and her mother, drove her to Tijuana “in their brand-new Cadillac” for the procedure.
“We parked on a really scruffy-looking street. It was scary,” Field said. “He parked about three blocks away and said, ‘See that building down there?’ He gave me an envelope with cash and told me to go inside and give them the money, then come right back to him.”
Describing the procedure as “beyond hideous and life-altering,” Field revealed that she was not given any anesthetic. “There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether, but he would take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb in a strange way, but I felt everything — the pain was intense,” she recalled. “I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out how to move my arms to push him away. It was just an absolute pit of shame.”
After the procedure, she was rushed out of the room as if “the building was on fire.” “They didn’t want me there; it was illegal,” she added. Field remains grateful to her family doctor, who would have faced severe consequences if anyone had discovered he helped her.
“Then, ‘fate’ or ‘something glorious outside of ourselves, whatever you believe, reached in,” she continued. “A few months later, I began auditioning. I didn’t have an agent; I wasn’t really an actor. I had been performing in high school, and by the end of that year, I became Gidget, the quintessential all-American girl next door.”
In the one-season sitcom, Field played a spirited teenager navigating life in Los Angeles with her widowed father, portrayed by Don Porter, and her best friend, Lynette Winter.
Field expressed that she embodied the “quintessential all-American girl next door,” as many young women of her generation faced similar struggles. Although she was initially hesitant to share her “horrific story,” she chose to speak out in support of reproductive freedom and to endorse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
“Pay attention to this election,” Field urged. “We can’t go back.”
Field first disclosed her abortion experience in her 2018 memoir, In Pieces. You can watch her full video message above.
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