‘My Abortion Saved My Life’: Halsey Talks Roe v. Wade, Motherhood in New Essay
Halsey has been a strong advocate for abortion rights, supporting the right to choose in May when the threat of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade loomed and defending their right to speak on it during their concerts. Now, following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Halsey is candidly opening up about her own abortion experiences in a new essay for Vogue.
The singer revealed that they suffered three miscarriages ahead of their 24th birthday, and said an abortion saved her life when they suffered complications during pregnancy loss.
“I miscarried three times before my 24th birthday. It seemed a cruel irony that I could get pregnant with ease but struggled to maintain a pregnancy,” the musician wrote. “One of my miscarriages required ‘aftercare,’ a gentle way of saying that I would need an abortion, because my body could not terminate the pregnancy completely on its own and I would risk going into sepsis without medical intervention.”
“During this procedure, I cried. I was afraid for myself and I was helpless,” she continued. “I was desperate to end the pregnancy that was threatening my life.”
Halsey welcomed her first child, son Elder, in July 2021. “My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his,” the singer wrote.
“My body, which I had loathed for years for routinely ‘failing,’ had done everything right,” Halsey wrote of her birth experience with Elder. “I shed a single tear in the exhaustion of post-labor. A tear of happiness that my body knew exactly what to do. My life’s long chapter of miscarriages and abortions was reduced to a page in that moment. It was simply divided into ‘before’ this moment and all things that would come after it. Years of blood and pain and misery from near-perilous and unwanted pregnancies, then the euphoria of chosen motherhood.”
But Halsey said before giving birth, she was prepared “for the worst” and rewrote their will during the third trimester of pregnancy out of fear of something going wrong: “How funny that while my own heart would amount to nothing more than a series of involuntary movements on an operating table, a beating heart in my womb could mean I couldn’t consent to saving my own life.”
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states can restrict or outright ban abortion at any point during a pregnancy, overturning the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined abortion protections in federal law, along with a subsequent decision that affirmed those protections in 1991.
The experience of giving birth and becoming a mother only strengthened the singer’s belief in a woman’s right to choose. “Many people have asked me if, since carrying a child to term after years of struggling to do so, I have reconsidered my stance on abortion. The answer is firmly no,” Halsey concluded. “In fact, I have never felt more strongly about it. My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his. Every person deserves the right to choose when, if, and how they have this dangerous and life-altering experience. I will hold my son in one arm, and fight with all my might with the other.”
