Paris Hilton has revealed that she had an abortion in her 20s while opening about her support for the ongoing fight for women’s reproductive freedom.
The Paris: The Memoir author, 42, spoke candidly about her experience during a new cover interview with Glamour UK.
According to Hilton, she’s held off sharing her own experience because there was “so much shame around” it. However, the heiress, who has become an outspoken activist in recent years, thinks it is “important” to speak out in support of bodily autonomy after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade.
“This was also something that I didn’t want to talk about because there was so much shame around that,” she said of the procedure in her early 20s. “I was a kid and I was not ready for that.”
But, according to Hilton, the last year has convinced her to lend her voice to the fight for reproductive freedom.
“I think it is important,” she said. “There’s just so much politics around it and all that, but it’s a woman’s body… Why should there be a law based on that? It’s your body, your choice and I really believe in that.
“It’s mind-boggling to me that they’re making laws about what you do with your reproductive health, because if it were the other way around with the guys, it would not be this way at all.”
While opening up about the topic, Hilton was asked about her famous family’s long friendship with former president Donald Trump, who placed the Supreme Court judges that overturned abortion access.
In response, Hilton seemed to suggest that the Hilton family no longer has a relationship with Trump.
“Not any more,” Hilton said when she was asked about the “close family friend”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hilton spoke candidly about the abuse she endured at boarding school as a teenager, as well as two other alleged experiences with abuse she encountered when she was 15.
According to Hilton, the experiences, and the shame that she felt growing up about the incidents, have also driven her advocacy work, which has included lobbying congress to reform laws governing youth facilities and campaigning for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse bill.
“I feel most empowered when I’m doing my advocacy work,” she explained. “Knowing that I can be the hero I always needed when I was a little girl.”
