Actress Christina Applegate reflected on the abortion of her child in the 1990s in her new memoir You with the Sad Eyes.
Applegate, the star of the ’90s hit Married…with Children, revealed in her New York Times Bestseller that she considered the abortion of her baby “murder” and even called it “killing my child,” and detailed her struggle with grief in the aftermath of her decision, NewBusters reported. Her memoir delves into her traumatic childhood experiences, including sexual abuse, as well as her current debilitating struggle with MS.
In the audio version of her memoir, she says she “fell pregnant” in April of 1991 and reads from a diary she kept at the time of her abortion,
“Well, yesterday I found out I was 6 1/2 weeks pregnant… I love this being… I always felt that if I ever got pregnant when I knew it was the wrong time, I wouldn’t have any problem having an abortion. ‘Oh, whatever. It isn’t even a baby yet.’ That’s bullsh*t. This creature’s incredible- makes me feel whole, safe,” she reads.
But the news of her pregnancy was poisoned by the painful physical and emotional abuse she endured from the baby’s father, she writes. Days later, another diary entry took a devastating turn.
“I’m f*cking pregnant, and I’m killing my child on Thursday. I’m thinking, ‘Where the f*ck can I go to recuperate from murder?’ His family will hate me when they find out that I killed their family member because they don’t believe in it. But I can’t have this baby because I have work to do to entertain this f*cking world. Besides, I can’t now,” she reads.
“It breaks my heart reading these pages,” Applegate says of her journal entries. “On June 9, I wrote a poem to my child, convinced it was a baby girl. I have no actual proof, but that doesn’t matter. To this day, I know.”
She then reads the poem she wrote to her baby:
Hello, little thing. I feel you every moment of my day. Such a tiny existence. Such an immense effect you have. You are a miracle. A tiny handed miracle. I love you, but you know your fate. It’s not your time. I know you didn’t make that decision, but it can’t be your time. You will live on, though. You will live through another. I hope you will forgive me, but I want you to know how you’ve changed me. You’ve opened my eyes. You’re letting me know something is more important than myself. But mommy can’t be with you right now. But know she loves you- more than any other miracle. And know that when it’s your time it will be your time.
Applegate goes on to describe how she foresaw a future where “the bill for all the guilt and unhappiness and trauma would be paid by my body.” She writes:
Maybe it’s just the long hours I have been spending on my bed thinking about my illness, but in reading these words from more than three decades ago, I find that I suffer a kind of concussive awareness of the future impact of all these dark events from my early life.
Those dark events include sexual abuse she suffered as a child, as well as the abusive relationship and abortion of her child. Applegate reads another journal passage she wrote from Sept. 14, 1991 in which she predicted her guilty conscience would eventually lead to sickness.
“That word ‘sorry’ sucks… I can’t be sorry. I can’t feel guilty. Guilt is not an emotion, it’s a disease- a pathetic life altering and, in the long run, fatal disease. It begins in the brain, then spreads the illness throughout the entire body until not only does the mind shut off, but the body, as well,” she writes.
“I did know that something very dangerous was happening inside my soul. Something that might one day shut off my body,” she adds.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
