“I chose me, and I would choose me again. It’s your life, it’s your choice,” Ireland Baldwin said in a video in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned
Ireland Baldwin is sharing her story about being a victim of rape and, later in her life, getting an abortion.
In a TikTok video she posted Sunday captioned “I’m here for you,” the 26-year-old model spoke about her own experiences, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade Friday.
She began with a disclaimer: “Before I share what I am going to share, I don’t feel that it is anybody’s responsibility to talk about this if they don’t feel comfortable. I’ve seen countless TikToks in the last 24 hours where women are telling other women that it is their responsibility to share their abortion story and I find that to be invasive and wrong and just simply not true.”
“I am only now sharing my story because I want other women to feel supported and loved, whether they want to share their own or not,” she noted.
Baldwin then revealed, “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.”
Baldwin went on to say she didn’t tell “anyone” except for a nurse who treated her shortly after it happened, including her boyfriend at the time or even her parents, Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin.
“I kept that secret inside of me for years, and because I did, it caused a lot of hurt and a lot of pain to me and to people I love,” she said.
The model said she “spiraled” because she “harbored so much pain and so much guilt for so long,” and as a result, “lost control of [her] life.”
“I drank a lot more, I partied a lot more, I self-medicated, I was in other abusive and toxic relationships and friendships. I pretty much just did everything I could to distract myself,” she continued.
“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 baby during everything I was going through at the time,” Baldwin said. “Mind you, I have medical resources, money and support that a lot of women do not have access to. It would’ve simply been traumatizing and impossible.”
Later in her life, Baldwin said, she got pregnant unexpectedly with her boyfriend at the time, whom she was “very unhappy” with, “and he made it pretty 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 shared.
Baldwin said “maybe, maybe not” when addressing whether she could have had the baby and put him or her up for adoption, “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. It’s your life, it’s your choice,” she concluded.
Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision of 1973 that granted women the right to an abortion in every state, was overturned by the Supreme Court on Friday.
The 6-to-3 ruling reverses nearly 50 years of legal precedent and will completely change the landscape of women’s reproductive rights by giving individual states the power to decide whether to allow the procedure. It is estimated that nearly half the country will enact near-total bans in the coming months.
Since the decision, states such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and South Dakota have already banned abortion after putting “trigger bans” in place that governors enacted after the SCOTUS ruling.
Protests have since erupted around the country and President Joe Biden has spoken out against the ruling, which he called the “realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.”
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