In her memoir, Christina Applegate reveals she had an abortion at 19 while in an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend. The actress shares diary entries from 1991 in her book, detailing her emotions during the pregnancy and abortion. Applegate says she felt it wasn’t the right time to have a baby and explains why. Christina Applegate is opening up about having an abortion at 19 while in an abusive relationship.
In her new memoir You With the Sad Eyes: A Memoir, the 54-year-old actress writes about discovering she was pregnant while dating her abusive ex, whom she does not name. Applegate says she became pregnant in April 1991 and documented the experience in her diary.
“In late April 1991, I fell pregnant. I want to turn away from what happened, but it’s all recorded in my diary,” Applegate writes. “There are moments in my life that are too painful to force into narrative or meaning, so I’ll let my voice from back then speak.”
In the book, the Dead to Me star includes excerpts from her actual diary. In one 1991 entry, she writes that “too many emotions are filling my soul” as she reflects on the pregnancy.
“I always felt that if I ever got pregnant when I knew it was the wrong time, I wouldn’t have any problem having an abortion,” she says.
At the time, Applegate was dating her abusive boyfriend. “I don’t really understand my relationship anymore. It isn’t good,” she wrote. “Sometimes I don’t think it’s worth it.”
Just one day after learning she was pregnant, Applegate wrote that things in her relationship took a “brutal turn.” She then decided to have an abortion.
“I’m f–king pregnant and I’m killing my child on Thursday. I’m thinking where the f–k can I go to recuperate from murder…” she wrote. “His family will hate me when they find out that I killed their family member because they don’t believe in [abortion]. But I can’t have this baby because I have work to do to entertain this f–king world. Besides, I can’t… now.”
Applegate, now mom to 15-year-old daughter Sadie, later wrote a diary entry after the abortion, saying she was okay but feeling “kind of woozy.”
“That gives me no time to realize what I have done,” she wrote. “Which is most likely the best right now.”
