KENERGY

Britney Says Her At-Home Abortion Was ‘Excruciating’—and Justin Didn’t Help

Timberlake laid down on the bathroom floor with her, Spears writes in her memoir, before going to get his guitar because he though “maybe music would help.”

Britney Spears recalls in her memoir that, while she suffered “excruciating cramps” after an at-home abortion at age 19, her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake strummed his guitar to soothe her. Largely because of Timberlake’s apprehension about becoming a young father, according to The Woman in Me, the pair decided on an abortion—and opted to keep away from a hospital. “It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home,” Spears writes, a medical decision she now believes was “wrong.” After taking the abortion pill, Spears “went into the bathroom and stayed there for hours, lying on the floor, sobbing and screaming,” she writes, “I went down to the ground on my knees, holding the toilet.” Timberlake came in and laid down next to her. Then, according to Spears, “he thought maybe music would help, so he got his guitar and he lay there with me, strumming it.” Despite her pain, though, she never went to a hospital.