Sharon Stone Opens Up About Having an Abortion at Age 18

Sharon Stone recently opened up about one of the most turbulent periods of her life, revealing that she accidentally became pregnant and underwent an abortion at the age of 18. Speaking with Michelle Obama on the IMO podcast, the 68-year-old actress discussed the experience and once again delivered sharp criticism regarding the erosion of women's reproductive rights in the United States.

Stone shared that she and her partner at the time received virtually no sex education. "He had no knowledge of the fact that I was supposed to use some kind of birth control," she told Obama and actor Craig Robinson. "I could have been the kid giving birth in a bathroom stall."

Reproductive Rights and Critical Views

The actress recalled that her pregnancy was only discovered after her partner remarked that she had gained weight, and even her parents did not suspect anything. "My parents thought it was the 'freshman 15'," she said, referring to the American slang for weight gain associated with the first year of college. "They had no idea."

She went on to sharply attack the current climate in the US surrounding women's rights and access to medical care.

We don't want to give women OBGYN care and we want to prosecute women for having a miscarriage? What kind of arcane bullshit is this? If men got pregnant you could get an abortion from a vending machine.

Memoir and Personal Hardships

Stone first wrote about the abortion in her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice. According to her, she was forced to travel to Ohio after failing to secure an appointment in Pennsylvania, where she lived. Regarding her recovery, she wrote about bleeding extensively in secret without anyone to turn to, leaving her weak and terrified. She noted that a clinic opening near her hometown later provided her with crucial sexual health education that ultimately saved her.

While the abortion discussed on the podcast was elective, Stone has also suffered profound personal losses through multiple miscarriages. In 2022, following the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion in the US, she revealed that she had lost nine children to miscarriages. Stone is the mother of three adopted sons: Roan, 26, Quinn, 20, and Laird, 21.