Sally Field recalls her ‘hideous’ illegal abortion at 17 as she urges voters to back Kamala Harris

Sally Field has spoken about the “hideous” and “traumatic” illegal abortion she underwent as a 17-year-old in 1964, as she called on voters to get behind Kamala Harris in the upcoming US presidential election.

The Oscar-winning actor first revealed her abortion in her 2018 memoir In Pieces, but wrote in the caption of her video, shared on Instagram, that she had “been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrific story”.

“It was during a time even worse than now,” she wrote. “A time when contraception was not readily available and only if you were married. But I feel that so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country.”

In the video, Field said she still feels “very shamed” about the abortion “because I was raised in the 50s, and it’s ingrained in me.” She was 17 when she underwent the procedure in 1964 – nine years before Roe v Wade introduced a constitutional right to abortion, which was upheld until the US supreme court overturned federal-level abortion rights in June 2022.

The actor said she had “no choices in my life” and little family support when she discovered she was pregnant. A family friend who was a doctor drove her, her mother and his wife to Tijuana, Mexico so she could undergo the abortion.

“We parked on a really scroungy-looking street, it was scary 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,” Field said, saying she believed he’d travelled with her in case she died.

The procedure was “beyond hideous and life-altering” and she “had no anesthetic”, she said.

“There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether but he would then take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb [and] weird, but I felt everything – how much pain I was in,” she said.

“Then the situation turned darker. I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame. And then, when it was finished, they said, ‘Go go go go go!’, like the building was on fire. And they didn’t want me there, you know, it was illegal.”

She thanked her doctor for his “generosity and bravery” in risking his licence by taking her to Mexico, and recalled that before the trip, she had never left her home state or been on an plane. But a few months after the illegal abortion, she began auditioning and booked her breakout role in Gidget soon after.

“These are the things that women are going through now – when they’re trying to get to another state, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the means, they don’t know where they’re going,” Field said. “And it’s beyond, and do that to our little girls and our young women, and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they’re able to give birth to a child at that time.”

In her caption, the actor called on voters to support Harris and Tim Walz or “those with ballot initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom.”

““PLEASE. WE CAN’T GO BACK!!” she ended.

Field previously endorsed Harris for president when Joe Biden stepped down, telling Variety in July that she was “so grateful” to Biden and that she supported Harris “with my whole 77-year-old heart.”

Public polling has long held that most Americans favour access to abortion, but many Republican-led state legislatures have sought to restrict access, mainly citing conservative religious beliefs.

While Roe v Wade was overturned two years after Donald Trump’s presidency ended, three US supreme court justice appointed by him formed part of the conservative bloc that struck the landmark decision down, with fears a second Trump presidency would restrict women’s reproductive rights even more.

Trump’s wife, Melania, recently revealed she is a passionate supporter of women’s right to abortion, writing in her new memoir: “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”