Comedian and actress Chelsea Handler never, ever shies away from controversy, so it’s not surprising that she was more than willing to get candid with Playboy about the two abortions she had at age 16.
In a personal essay for Playboy’s “Freedom” issue, Handler wrote:
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. Maybe I’ll have twins and give them rhyming names! Of course, the idea that I would have a child and raise it by myself at that age, when I couldn’t even find my way home at night, was ridiculous. My parents recognized that, so they acted like parents for one of the very first times in my life and took me to Planned Parenthood. I felt parented, ironically, while I was getting an abortion. And when it was over, I was relieved in every possible way.
Previously, Handler wrote about having one abortion in a piece for the New York Times. She called out the show 16 & Pregnant while doing so. “Getting rewarded for being pregnant when you’re a teenager? Are you serious? I mean, that makes me want to kill somebody,” she opined.
The host of Netflix’s Chelsea went on to open up about a 2nd unplanned pregnancy with the same boyfriend:
And I didn’t have just one abortion; I had two in the same year, impregnated by the same guy. I didn’t have the money the second time. I had to scrape together the $230 to pay Planned Parenthood, but it was a safe abortion. Getting unintentionally pregnant more than once is irresponsible, but it’s still necessary to make a thoughtful decision. We all make mistakes all the time. I happened to f*** up twice at the age of 16. I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family. I’m 41 now. I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.
Handler then expressed her gratitude for Roe v. Wade, and said she doesn’t believe it’s in danger of being overturned. “Once you go forward in history, you don’t go backward,” she explained. “That would be like the government saying, ‘Okay, we’re taking away your right to vote too.’ You can’t introduce a black person and be like, ‘Oh, I just got a slave!’ That era is over.
“Anybody who carefully decides not to become a parent—let alone a bad parent, which is what I would have become—should be applauded for making a smart and sustainable decision,” she concluded. “I’d love for somebody to try to tell me what to do with my body. I dare them.”
