Talk show host and comedian Chelsea Handler says she’s grateful she was able to get a safe abortion when she became pregnant — twice — at the age of 16.
The host of Netflix’s talk show “Chelsea” penned an essay on abortion rights for Playboy magazine’s “Freedom” issue.
“Like millions of women, I can live my life without an unplanned child born out of an unhealthy relationship because of Roe v. Wade,” Handler wrote.
At 16, “I hated my parents and I was having unprotected sex with my boyfriend, who was not someone I should’ve been having sex with in the first place, never mind unprotected sex,” she said.
“I wasn’t really playing with a full deck of cards, and when I got pregnant I just thought, Why not? I can have a baby,” she recalled. “Maybe I’ll have twins and give them rhyming names!”
Instead, Handler said, her parents took her to Planned Parenthood and she had an abortion.
But that didn’t stop her from getting pregnant again that same year by the same boyfriend, she wrote.
“Getting unintentionally pregnant more than once is irresponsible, but it’s still necessary to make a thoughtful decision,” Handler said. “We all make mistakes all the time.”
The actress said despite the resurgence of efforts to restrict access to abortions, she’s not worried about the future of the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion rights.
“Once you go forward in history, you don’t go backward. That would be like the government saying, ‘Okay, we’re taking away your right to vote too.'”
Monday, the Supreme Court threw out a Texas abortion access law that abortion rights supporters argued would have shut down almost all of the clinics in that state.
In her essay, Handler wrote that — like racism and sexism — she doubts that America will ever come to a common consensus about abortion, and that’s just fine.
“It’s okay if you think it’s not right for women to have abortions — but it’s not your problem, because we decide,” Handler said.