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.
āIf it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,ā she writes of the procedure, according to the excerpt from āThe Woman in Meā published Tuesday in People magazine. āAnd yet Justin was so sure that he didnāt want to be a father.ā
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The pregnancy āwas a surprise, but for me, it wasnāt a tragedy,ā she wrote in the excerpt, saying that she had wanted to start a family with Timberlake ā it was just earlier than expected.
āBut Justin definitely wasnāt happy about the pregnancy. He said we werenāt ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,ā she wrote. The couple broke up in 2002. Itās 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 AP has not been able to independently review a copy of the āThe Woman in Meā 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 āone of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.ā
Spearsā 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-oldās tumultuous decades in the spotlight.
āNO ONE KNOWS WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT ā¦ UNTIL NOW,ā reads a teaser for the book she posted Sunday. The audiobook will be narrated by actor Michelle Williams.
Hailing from Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears rose to fame as a tween on āThe Mickey Mouse Club,ā alongside other future stars like Ryan Gosling and Timberlake ā a trajectory chronicled in other excerpts published by People.
Despite some further attempts at acting ā in the People excerpts, she says the lead in āThe Notebookā came down to her and Rachel McAdams and that she was relieved when 2002ās āCrossroadsā was āwas pretty much the beginning and end of my acting careerā ā she found indelible stardom with her music career, starting with 1999ās āā¦Baby One More Time.ā
She had two sons with Kevin Federline, but was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship ā mostly under the supervision of her father ā that controlled her life, money and voice after public breakdowns. That conservatorship would last nearly 14 years, ending in late 2021, after a swelling #FreeBritney movement that helped secure new limits on conservatorships in California.
Many of Spearsā allegations against her father and others who operated the conservatorship are expected to be heard in a civil trial scheduled for next year.
A 2021 documentary, āFraming Britney Spears,ā included an old interview in which Timberlake spoke of sleeping with a former girlfriend and indicated he ridiculed her in his āCry Me A Riverā music video. That sparked a backlash in which fans accused the former NSYNC member of contributing to Spearsā breakdown and also renewed ire about his role in Janet Jacksonās so-called wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Subsequently, he apologized to Spears and Jackson ābecause I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.ā
A few months later, as Spears revealed long-guarded secrets about what she described as an āabusiveā conservatorship in court, Timberlake tweeted his support.
āAfter what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,ā he posted in June 2021. āRegardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it wasā¦ whatās happening to her is just not right.ā