Without anesthesia

Sally Field talks about traumatic abortion

Sally Field(Bild: Danny Moloshok / REUTERS)

Hollywood star Sally Field (77) talks about an abortion she had secretly in Mexico as a teenager. The procedure was illegal in the USA at the time.

In an emotional video message on Instagram, the actress describes the "traumatic" experience and says that young women in the USA are now going through similar things because of strict abortion regulations. "We can't go back," Field warns. "We have to fight".

"This is one of the reasons why so many of us support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," she writes on the video. Voters in every state should pay attention to ballot initiatives that can protect reproductive freedom.

Dispute over abortion rights
The dispute over abortion rights is one of the central issues in the US election campaign. The Democrats around candidate Kamala Harris repeatedly warn that women's rights in the USA are in great danger. Just over two years ago, the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion. Former President Trump had shifted the majority on the court significantly to the right through several reappointments, making this decision possible in the first place. Now the states can decide on abortion rights - abortions are now largely banned in a number of them.

Procedure without anaesthetic
So many young women of her generation have had to have abortions in secret, Field says in the video. A doctor friend of her family drove her from California to Tijuana, Mexico, and sent her to a building in a bad neighborhood with an envelope of money. The painful procedure was carried out there without anesthetic. She was then sent away immediately.

The mother of three sons also describes how her life changed completely shortly afterwards. In a competition for the title role in the TV series "Gidget", she beat out the many competitors. Her TV debut as a surfer girl was the starting signal for her acting career.