The former 'Saturday Night Live' comic dishes on her past pregnancy terminations and explains she had no one to teach her about sex education when she was young.
- Sep 20, 2023
AceShowbiz - Leslie Jones underwent three abortions when she was younger. The 56-year-old actress terminated her first pregnancy when she was 18 and dating a man names Richard Brooks, who was 27 at the time, and she told how their on/off romance lasted "too many years" and they didn't use birth control, but she has no regrets about her decisions.
"All I felt was an urgency to not be pregnant. So, I had an abortion, and it was very hard. I don't want to say it was wrong, because to this day I would do the same thing," she wrote in her new memoir "Leslie F****** Jones".
Leslie - whose mother never recovered after she suffered a massive stroke when her daughter was young - expressed her regret that she just "didn't know any of that stuff" about preventing getting pregnant. She wrote, "My mom got sick early in my life and she wasn't there to teach me about [sex education]."
After undergoing three abortions, the former "Saturday Night Live" star realised, "This is not a birth control method." Leslie credits the charity Planned Parenthood, which provides sex education and information, and reproductive health care, for saving her life.
She said, "I still give money to them to this day. When I went to Planned Parenthood, I finally learned how to prevent pregnancies and take care of myself. Thank God for those people and what they do."
The "Supermarket Sweep" host - who split from Richard in 2010 after he allegedly gave her an STD and got someone else pregnant - explained her fear of giving birth came after her health class were shown a video in ninth grade. She told People magazine, "I remember running all the way home and I looked right at my mom and said, 'I will never do that!' "
And Leslie doesn't regret not having had a family of her own. She said, "I didn't get married and have kids, but I don't know if that's what I wanted. I've always wanted to take care of myself."
