Chelsea Handler Has No Regrets About the 2 Abortions She Had as a Teen

Chelsea Handler revealed in an essay in the July/August issue of Playboy that she had two abortions when she was 16. “Getting an abortion wasn’t the first idea that popped into my unripened brain,” she said.

Handler’s abortions came at what she called a “bad stage” in her life: “I hated my parents and I was having unprotected sex with my boyfriend, who was not someone I should’ve been having sex with in the first place, never mind unprotected sex.”

Once she told her parents about the pregnancy, however, they “acted like parents for one of the very first times in my life and took me to Planned Parenthood.” She says that after her abortion, she was “relieved in every possible way.”

Read more: Read Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Powerful Defense of Abortion Rights

Handler got pregnant again not long after her first pregnancy. Although she initially worried she couldn’t afford the second procedure, she scrounged up $230.

She said that she never regretted her decision to end the two pregnancies. “I’m grateful that I came to my senses and was able to get an abortion legally without risking my health or bankrupting myself or my family,” she wrote. “I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.”