Britney Spears wrote that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago, according to a peek in🍸side her hotly anticipated m🌊emoir.
“If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” she writes of the procedure, according to the excerpt from “Th🐭e Woman in Me” published Tuesday in People magazin💎e. “And yet Justin was so sure that he didn't want to be a father.”
The pregnancy “was a surprise, but for me, it wasn't 🐓a tragedy,” she wrote in the excerpt, saying that she had wanteꦑd to start a family with Timberlake — it was just earlier than expected.
“But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote. The couple broke up in 🔯2002. It's unclear when the pregnancy happened.
Representatives for Spears declined to offer further comment. Representatives for Timberlake did not respond to requests f🌠or comment from The Associated Press. The AP has not been able to independently review a copy of the “The Woman in Me” yet.
Spears, a pro🦄lific user of social media, has no⛦t posted to Instagram or X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, since the People stories were published.
In the excerpt published in P🌌eople, she characterised the abortion as “one of the most agonising things I have 💛ever experienced in my life.”
Spears' long-awaited memoir will be published October 24, j🍸ust months after her divorce from Sam Asghari was announced and promising tꦅo shed light on the 41-year-old's tumultuous decades in the spotlight.
“NO ONE KNOWS WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT... UNTIL NOW,” reads a teaser for the book she posted Sunday. The audiobꦍook will be narrated by actor Michelle Williams.
Hailing from Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears rose to fame as a tween on “The Mickey Mouse Club”, alongside other future stars like ꦛRyan Gosling and Timberlake — a trajectory chronicled in other excerpts published by People.
Despite some further attempts a▨t acting — in the People excerpts, she says the lead in “The Notebook” came down to her and Rachel McAdams and that she was relieved when 2002's “Crossroads” was “was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career” — she found indelible stardom with her music career, starting with 1999's “...Baby One More Time.”
She had two sons with Kevin Federline, but was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship — mostly under the supervision of her father — that controlled her life, money and voice after public breakdowns. That conservatorship would last nearly 14 years, ending in la🍸te 2021, after a swelling #FreeBritney movement that helped secure new limits on conservatorships in California.
Many of Sp♉ears' allegations against her father and others who operated the conservatorship are expected to be heard in a civil trial s꧟cheduled for next year.
A 2021 documentary, “Framing Britney Spears”, included an old interview in which Timberlake spoke of sleeping with a former girlfriend and indicated he ridiculed her in his “C🔥ry Me A River” music video.
That sparked a backlash in which fans accused the former NSYNC member of contributing to Spears' breakdown and also renewed ire about his role in Janet Jackson's so-called wardrobe malfunction dur👍ing ﷽the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.
Subsequently, he apologised to Spears💃 and Jackson “because I care for and respect these women and I ಌknow I failed.”
A few months later, as Spears reve𝐆aled long-guarded secrets about what she described as an “abusive” conservatorship in court, Timberlake tweeted his support.
“After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,” he posted🍷 in June 2021. “Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was… what's happen♚ing to her is just not right.”
