‘I had no choices in my life’: Sally Field relates the ‘beyond hideous and life-altering’ experience she had at 17 and issues a dire warning about reproductive rights

It’s no secret that abortion rights are one of the most pivotal issues facing voters this presidential election. When the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, it politically galvanized a huge swath of women around the country. Many famous celebrities have expressed support for restoring abortion rights, but Oscar-winning actress Sally Field has taken a courageously personal stand. Field had her own traumatic experience with the procedure before it was made legal, and she wants to warn voters about the traumas carried by women and girls without access to safe, legal abortion care.

Field, 77, has a career in Hollywood that dates back to the 1960s. In 1965, she was cast as the lead in an ABC sitcom called Gidget, about a boy-crazy teenager who loves to surf. Roe v Wade, which protected the right to abortion, didn’t go into effect until 1973.

It turns out Field needed the procedure before it was legalized, and she recently shared just how harrowing that experience was for her in a video she posted on her Instagram page.

She shared that she was really hesitant to tell what she called a “horrific” story.

“I was 17. 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,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was gonna be, and then I found out I was pregnant.”

Her story is eye-opening and uncomfortable, but it illustrates just what happens when medical care for abortion is outlawed. In fact, abortions post the Roe v. Wade decision have increased, showing that the decision didn’t have its intended effect.

Field said she was able to get her procedure done thanks to her family doctor, who also happened to be a friend of the family. She recounts driving with him, his wife, and her mother in his brand-new Cadillac to Tijuana, Mexico to get the procedure done.

“We parked on a really scrungy looking street. It was scary,” she said. “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 said she was barely given any anesthetic, only “a few puffs of ether” that made her arms and legs feel numb. During the procedure, she felt all of the pain, and was cognizant enough to realize when the technician sexually assaulted her, and “tried to move my arms so I could push him away.” This kind of abuse was a not-uncommon violation experienced by girls and women at the mercy of unregulated providers.

“It was this absolute pit of shame,” she said.

Worldwide, the stakes of illegal abortion are extreme; Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reports that as a result of unsafe abortion practices, an estimated 7 million women and girls worldwide are injured or disabled, and 29,000 die, every year.

Within a year of her ordeal, Sally Field landed the part of Gidget, a character she describes as the “quintessential, all-American girl next door.” As she observes, she, too, was the quintessential, all-American girl next door, because “so many young women in my generation of women were going through this.”

Gidget was only Field’s first success in a career that’s lasted more than five decades in Hollywood. She’s been nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards twice, once for Norma Rae (1980), and again for Places in the Heart (1985). She won both times.

Would this have been possible had she not gotten her procedure? Impossible to say. However, she shared her story to call for more reproductive rights for women, and to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. “Pay attention to this election,” she said. “We can’t go back.”