Pop star Britney Spears’ new memoir is set to be released next week, and in it, she allegedly drops a bombshell: She claims she was persuaded into having an abortion two decades ago by her boyfriend at the time, Justin Timberlake.
PEOPLE Magazine received an exclusive excerpt from the book, “The Woman In Me,” in which Spears claims she underwent an abortion 20 years ago. At the time, Spears was one of the biggest pop starlets in the world, while Timberlake was the frontman of the boy band ‘NSYNC.
“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated,” Spears wrote. “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
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Spears further claims that she underwent an abortion at Timberlake’s urging. Timberlake has not yet commented on the allegation from Spears.
“I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father,” she wrote. “To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
It’s common for women to be pressured into abortions they don’t truly want. Studies show that 64% of women who have undergone an abortion did so due to pressure from parents, boyfriends, employers, and friends. Additional research published by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons reported that 73.8% of women with a history of abortion experienced “at least subtle forms of pressure” to abort. Spears’ own sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, has said she was pressured to have an abortion by her family and others when she became pregnant at 16 while starring in a successful Nickelodeon television show. She ultimately chose life for her daughter.
“‘It will kill your career. You are just too young. You don’t know what you’re doing. There are pills you can take. We can help you take care of this problem… I know a doctor,’” Jamie Lynn said her circle told her, adding that “everyone around me just wanted to make this ‘issue’ disappear” and that “everyone was certain that termination would be the best course of action.”
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Jamie Lynn resisted the pressure to have an abortion and gave birth to a little girl in 2008. Spears and Timberlake had broken up six years prior, and at this point in time, Jamie Lynn was barred from communicating with Spears. “I needed her more than ever and she wasn’t able to help me in my most vulnerable time,” she said. “To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself still lingers.”
Spears and Timberlake were together from 1999 to 2002. By October of 2004, Spears had married dancer Kevin Federline. They split in 2007, divorcing just months after Spears was photographed shaving her head. Spears would later say she shaved her head after Federline wouldn’t let her see their two young sons. That same year, she was placed under a conservatorship, and after 13 years, successfully fought to have it dissolved.
Spears claimed that while under the conservatorship, she was prohibited from having more children, alleging that she was forced to have an IUD device — a form of long-term birth control — inserted against her wishes.
Research shows that of the 64% of women who said they were pressured into an abortion, 65% showed signs of trauma, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, women who were coerced into abortions appear to have a 65% higher risk of clinical depression and a 6-7x higher rate of suicide compared to women who give birth.
