Sally Field reveals ‘horrific’ reason she’s backing Kamala Harris

Oscar-winning actress Sally Field has posted a video to Instagram in which she remembered the “traumatic” illegal abortion she underwent in 1964 before her acting career took off.  

Field first wrote about the abortion in her 2018 memoir “In Pieces,” and is using her own experience to highlight the current challenges women are facing since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, on the grounds that the right to abortion was not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history or tradition”. 

“I’ve been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrific story,” Field wrote in the caption to the video. “It was during a time even worse than now. A time when contraception was not readily available and only if you were married. But I feel that so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country.” 

She continued: “It’s one of the reasons why so many of us are supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Everyone, please, pay attention to this election, up and down the ballot, in every state – especially those with ballot initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom. PLEASE. WE CAN’T GO BACK!!”

In the video, Field shares that her family doctor brought her to Tijuana, Mexico after the 17-year-old became pregnant in order to perform the abortion. This was before the establishment of Roe v Wade. 

“We parked on a really scroungy-looking street, it was scary and he parked about three blocks away and said, ‘See that building down there?’ And he gave me an envelope with cash and I was to walk into that building and give them the cash and then come right back to him,” Field said. 

The actor called the experience “beyond hideous and life-altering” and said she “had no anesthetic” during the procedure. She also shared that the technician was “actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame.” 

Shortly after her illegal abortion, Field says, she began auditioning and landed her breakthrough role of Gidget Lawrence in the sitcom Gidget by the end of the year. 

“These are the things that women are going through now — when they’re trying to get to another state, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the means, they don’t know where they’re going,” Field said. “And it’s beyond, how you can go back to that and do that to our little girls and our young women, and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they’re able to give birth to a child at that time. We can’t go back. We have to all stand up and fight.” 

The US presidential election will be held on 5 November.