Spears writes of abortion while dating Timberlake
Britney Spears wrote that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago, according to a peek inside her hotly anticipated memoir.
“If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” she writes of the procedure, according to the excerpt from “The Woman in Me” published Tuesday in People magazine. “And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
The pregnancy “was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” she wrote in the excerpt, saying that she had wanted to start a family with Timberlake — it was just earlier than expected.
“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote.
The couple broke up in 2002. It’s unclear when the pregnancy happened.
Representatives for Spears declined to offer further comment. Representatives for Timberlake did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The Associated Press has not been able to independently review a copy of the “The Woman in Me” yet.
Spears, a prolific user of social media, has not posted to Instagram or X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, since the People stories were published.
In the excerpt published in People, she characterized the abortion as “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
Spears’ long-awaited memoir will be published Oct. 24, just months after her divorce from Sam Asghari was announced and promising to shed light on the 41-year-old’s tumultuous decades in the spotlight.
“NO ONE KNOWS WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT … UNTIL NOW,” reads a teaser for the book she posted Sunday. The audiobook will be narrated by actor Michelle Williams.