The 26-year-old model opened up about her experiences with sexual assault and abortion in a video shared to TikTok Sunday.
Ireland Baldwin is sharing her own experiences with abortion about the Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade. The 26-year-old model took to TikTok Sunday to tell her story in an effort to help other women feel supported and loved amid Friday's ruling, which made abortion illegal in several states across the nation.
"I am only now sharing my story because I want other women to feel supported and loved, whether they want to share their own story or not," Baldwin said after noting that she saw others on TikTok prompting women to share their abortion stories. "I'm not here to tell this story today, but I was raped when I was a teenager, and I was completely unconscious when it happened, and it changed the course of the rest of my life."
She continued, "I never told anyone at the time, not for years. The only person who knew was a nurse that treated me shortly after. And I didn't even tell my own boyfriend at the time. Not my parents. No one."
Keeping that secret, Baldwin said, caused a lot of hurt and a lot of pain to her and the people she loved. After drinking, partying and self-medicating to distract herself from the pain, Baldwin said she ended up spiraling, finding herself in abusive and toxic relationships and friendships.
After the Supreme Court's decision Friday, Baldwin started thinking about what her life would have been like if she had become pregnant during that pivotal moment in her life.
@irelandshmireland I’m here for you ♥️ #fyp #roevwade #womensrights ♬ original sound - Ireland
"Seeing so many other brave women share their stories, got me thinking what my life would have been like if I had become pregnant, and if I had to raise a maybe during everything I was going through at the time," Baldwin wondered aloud. "Mind you, I have medical resources, money and support that a lot of women do not have access to."
"It would have simply been traumatizing and impossible," she added.
Baldwin went on to recall a time when she did get pregnant and decided to undergo an abortion.
"Flash forward to another point in my life when I did have a boyfriend, and I did become pregnant. At that point in time, I would say we were very unhappy together," Baldwin shared. "And he made it clear that he never wanted kids or marriage. He barely wanted to be in a serious relationship."
"I chose to get an abortion because I know exactly what it felt like to be born between two people who hated each other," she continued, referring to the tumultuous marriage between her parents Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
Baldwin explained her reason for not wanting to bring that child into the world, and said, "I chose me, and I would choose me again."
"Could I have had that baby and put that baby up for adoption? Maybe. Maybe not," she said. "But choosing to raise a baby without my own financial security, without a loving and supportive partner, that wasn't gonna work for me."
"I chose me, and I would choose me again," Baldwin added before telling viewers, "It's your life, it's your choice."
On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned its landmark decision in Roe v. Wade that established the right to an abortion. The ruling marks a seismic shift in abortion law and will usher in new rules limiting or banning access to the procedure in half of the states, in some places immediately.
The ruling came in a case involving a Mississippi law that banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and the court reversed the decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked the measure.
The decision undoes nearly 50 years of precedent and will have sweeping ramifications for women, trans men, and nonbinary people across the country as abortion rights are curtailed, particularly in GOP-led states in the South and Midwest, and lead to a patchwork of laws absent the constitutional protection. Thirteen states have so-called "trigger laws" on the books, in which abortion will swiftly be outlawed in most cases with Roe overturned.
For more celeb reactions on the Roe v. Wade reversal, see the video below.
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