In the days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, celebrities have come out to express their disappointment and share their own abortion stories in solidarity. Yesterday, Laura Prepon added her voice to the chorus, sharing her abortion story on Twitter and Instagram. “One of the worst days of my life was when I made the choice to terminate a pregnancy in the second trimester,” she wrote. “The devastating truth is that we found out the fetus would not survive to full term, and that my life was at risk as well. At the time — I had the choice.”
Prepon continued, stressing, “Everyone has their own story for seeking out this medical procedure and I empathize with anyone who’s been faced with this impossible decision.” She ended on a somewhat hopeful note, saying she hoped that Americans could “get through this challenging time and regain agency over our own bodies.”
The actor, who shares two kids with her husband, Ben Foster, first opened up about her abortion story in her 2020 book You & I As Mothers. In her book, she wrote about welcoming her first child, a daughter, in 2017 before getting pregnant again in 2018. At the 16-week sonogram, she learned that her baby had cystic hygroma, a condition caused by an abnormal development of the lymphatic vascular system. “Our neonatal specialist told us the brain was not growing and the bones were not growing,” Prepon told People. “We were told the pregnancy would not go to full term and that my body was at risk carrying any longer.” She terminated the pregnancy. “To get to the second trimester and then be told this awful news, I felt like a failure. I felt like my body had failed and failed having another baby,” she added. She later welcomed a son in early 2020.
