Nicki Minaj’s new album The Pinkprint got personal when she addressed an abortion she had as a teenager. Now in a new interview with Rolling Stone, the “Anaconda” singer opens up about her choice.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said of getting pregnant as a high schooler. “I was a teenager. It was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through.” Ultimately she decided to get an abortion, a choice that “haunted me all my life.”
“It’d be contradictory if I said I wasn’t pro-choice,” she continued. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”
Minaj first referenced her abortion on her early mixtape track “Autobiography,” but she says she didn’t expect anyone to listen to that song. Now that she’s a superstar, she knows her fans are listening. “My child with Aaron, would’ve have been sixteen, any minute,” she raps on “All Things Go,” which premiered earlier this month.
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Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com