9 Black Celebs Who Went Public About Having an Abortion

Lil Kim Rapper Lil' Kim was 18 when she found out she was carrying the child of her lover, fellow rapper Biggie Smalls, Notorious B.I.G. Smalls was married to R&B singer Faith Evans at the time and encouraged Lil Kim to get an abortion. Kim's romantic relationship with Smalls inspired a bitter rivalry with Evans that the two would play out in the gossip columns, on stage, and with their respective record labels. Sherri Shepard The View co-host Sherri Shepherd admitted she had several abortions during a contentious debate on a February 2o12 airing of the daytime talk show. Shepherd said that the people who oppose birth control and abortion often oppose food stamps, welfare and financial safety nets that would help women who can't afford to raise children. "We stop at the picket signs and we don't help you past that!" she said, choking up. "I'm speaking as a girl who had a lot of abortions and I swear to God, if they had shown me a picture of the fetus... I would have put my child in a lot of situations that wouldn't have been good because I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with having a child." Alice Walker In 1965, The Color Purple author Alice Walker discovered she was pregnant during her senior year at college. For three days Walker reportedly slept with a razor blade underneath her pillow, contemplating suicide. A friend of the author located a doctor to perform an abortion, but after the procedure, Walker suffered from anxiety and depression. She wrote a number of poems based on her experience, which became the basis of her first book of poetry, Once, published three years later. Rebecca Walker In her 2001 book, Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, Rebecca Walker, daughter of Pulitzer-Prize winning author Alice Walker, writes about her freewheeling teenage years when she experimenting with drugs, sexual encounters with men and women, and having an abortion at 14. Walker blamed her risky, youthful behavior on being neglected by her career-driven parents. Whoopi Goldberg Actress, comedian, and talk show co-host, Whoopi Goldberg reportedly lived a “bohemian lifestyle” that included running away at 13 years old, living on the streets, abusing illegal substances and promiscuous activities. Early in her career, her performance routine included a recollection of how she had used a coat hanger to perform an abortion on herself when she was 14. It's been reported that the actress has admitted to at least four more abortions until she changed her lifestyle by checking into a rehab center to address her drug addictions. Vanessa Williams After previously speaking out about being molested when she was 10, actress Vanessa Williams revealed in an April 2012 television interview with Nightline, that she had an abortion when she was a teenager. The mother of four said, "Being pregnant is the most frightening thing that happens in your life," and that she was not prepared to deal with the pregnancy in high school. "I knew in high school that's something that I was not prepared to do, or fight, or struggle with," said the actress. Williams also said she believes she became sexually active at an early age because she was molested by a 18-year-old female family friend. "I think I was highly sexualized because I was in fifth grade and I had this experience," she explained. Toni Braxton In her 2014 autobiography, Unbreak My Heart, singer Toni Braxton revealed that she had an abortion in 2001, before she was married. The 46-year-old Grammy winner later gave birth to two sons, Denim and Diezel, the younger of whom has been diagnosed with autism. Braxton wrote in her memoir that at one time she believed her son's autism may have been a punishment from God for having the abortion. Tami Roman Reality TV star Tami Roman had the first-ever televised abortion at the age 23, while filming The Real World show in Los Angeles. Roman opened up about her experience in a 2013 interview saying: “My thought process when I did it was to show young girls what happens when you don’t handle your life responsibly. Here I am forced to make a decision at 23 that I shouldn’t have to make because I didn’t do the right thing. I didn’t handle having safe sex,” she says. The mother of two added: “Ironically, I worked at an HIV center and I was the person who got caught up in a situation like this. I wanted it documented. The turmoil I went through in making the decision, how it affected my mother, having to go to the clinic and have complications after… I wanted people to take that journey with me and see.” Tina Turner After giving birth to a son for Raymond Hill, a saxophone player, in 1958, and for her husband and manager Ike Turner in 1964, singer Tina Turner, had an abortion in 1968 after getting pregnant a second time by Ike. She also attempted suicide the same year.

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