In the wake of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, Ireland Baldwin took to TikTok to talk about her own experience of abortion. The model told fans she wanted to share her story “because I want other women to feel supported and loved whether they want to share their own or not.”
Baldwin began by revealing that she was raped while “completely unconscious” when she was a teenager. Although she didn’t become pregnant, “it changed the course of the rest of my life,” she said, adding that she didn’t tell anyone for years. “I spiraled, I lost control of my life. I drank a lot more, I partied a lot more, I self-medicated, I was in other abusive and toxic relationships and friendships,” she explained, describing the emotional and physical toll the experience had on her. “Seeing so many other brave women share their stories got me thinking what my life would have been like if I had become pregnant and if I had to raise a baby during everything I was going through at the time.” Baldwin recognized that she had “medical resources, money, and support,” but notes that the hypothetical “would have simply been traumatizing and impossible” even for someone with her privilege.
Baldwin then described an instance when she did get pregnant with a boyfriend: “At that point in time, I would say we were very unhappy together, and he made it pretty clear that he never wanted kids or marriage. He barely wanted to be in a serious relationship.” She said she decided to have an abortion “because I know exactly what it felt like to be born to two people who hated each other.” Her parents, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, had a famously contentious divorce and custody battle. She acknowledged that she could have given up the baby for adoption but that it wasn’t for her. “Choosing to raise a baby without my own financial security, without a loving and supportive partner, that wasn’t going to work for me,” she said. “I chose me, and I would choose me again. It’s your life, it’s your choice.”
Baldwin was recently in the news for calling Amber Heard “manipulative” and a “terrible person” amid her defamation trial against Johnny Depp after audio surfaced of Heard admitting she had hit her then-husband. She commented on the recording in an Instagram Story, accusing Heard of using her “womanhood to play victim” and insisting that “men can experience abuse too.” She later told her Instagram followers in a Q&A that she regretted weighing in on the trial. “I regret chiming in about the whole thing because the reality of it is that it’s all very sad. And I feel bad in different ways for the both of them,” she wrote in her stories. “I was trying to [be] clear that men can be abused as well and anyone who thinks differently is an idiot.”