In an episode of the Unwaxed Podcast, Sophia and Sistine Stallone interviewed their father, actor Sylvester Stallone, about the release of the Netflix documentary, “Sly.” During the interview, they asked their father about his tough upbringing, including that his mother, Jackie Stallone, “was nervous” to have him — and this interaction revealed something they didn’t expect.
“You had said that your mom was nervous to have you,” said Sistine. “She didn’t want you, right?”
“Not at all,” replied Stallone. “My mother would say, ‘The only reason you’re here is because the hanger didn’t work’ or ‘bouncing down those steps didn’t cause you to get lost.'” Based on these remarks, it sounds as if Stallone’s mother had tried to kill him in at least one, perhaps multiple, DIY abortion attempts.
At this revelation, his daughters were visibly shocked, with Sistine’s jaw dropping open.
He added, “And she said that, ‘You know, truthfully, Sylvester … you know, if there was really something wrong with your brain, I would have definitely opened up the window and put you on the windowsill and let you freeze because I’d be doing you a favor.'”
Sophia replied, “What type of mother says that to their child?”
Stallone, however, with compassion, went on to offer an explanation for his mother’s abortion attempt as well as the emotional abuse and neglect she inflicted on Stallone during his childhood.
“My mother, she was a troubled person. She was put into an orphanage, you know, and a very cruel orphanage because her father had remarried and the new stepmother hated her,” he explained. “And I think my mother was also kind of rebellious. So she was put into an orphanage that — it’s unlike the ones they have today. It was, you know, you’re tied to the bed, you’re whipped, and you’re… she was terribly molested. And I think her ability to ever show love was short-circuited. She literally couldn’t stand to be touched or touch at all. I mean, not even a hug.”
He said this affected his own relationships, as he didn’t like to be touched either — because “affection…was so alien” to him that it made him uncomfortable.
Though seemingly unrelated to the abortion attempts, Stallone reportedly had a traumatic birth as well. The doctor used a pair of forceps to deliver him, which severed a nerve on his face and paralyzed the left side of his lip, chin, and part of his tongue, causing his face to droop.
“Even though she was nine months pregnant, she kept riding around on the bus,” he said of his mother and his birth. “And she went into labor. Somebody was smart enough to get her off the bus, they carried her into a charity ward. And that’s where I was brought into the world via this accident, which kind of paralyzed all the nerves on the side of my mouth. So I was born with this snarl.”
Stallone’s story shows that a mother’s opinion on whether or not she ‘wants’ her child has nothing to do with the child’s humanity, right to life, or value. Stallone’s daughters — who would not exist if Stallone’s mother had successfully killed him — clearly want him as their father.
Stallone is not alone. He survived an attempted self-abortion prior to the legalization of abortion in the United States, and babies are still surviving abortions today. Many are left to die, some are killed, and some are saved and adopted, and speak out against abortion.
Only a handful of states require instances of abortion survivors to be documented, but Live Action News found 220 cases of abortion survivors reported from 1999-2023 in just eight states. Because of a failure to require states to report abortion statistics or survivors, and abortionists’ attempts to hide their ‘failed abortions,’ that number is almost certainly substantially higher.
