Actress Christina Applegate is opening up about one of the most painful moments of her life. In her new memoir You with the Sad Eyes, the Married…with Children star recalls the abortion she had in the early 1990s, describing it as the moment she “killed” her child and admitting that the choice has haunted her for decades.
Applegate’s book, a New York Times bestseller, mixes diaries from her youth with reflections from her current battle with multiple sclerosis. According to a report from NewsBusters, she writes in raw and direct terms about her decision to end the pregnancy in 1991 and the emotional toll that followed. In the audiobook version, she reads directly from her journal, describing both deep love for the unborn baby and the crushing guilt that came afterward.
“I found out I was six and a half weeks pregnant,” she reads. “I love this being. I always said I’d be fine having an abortion if it wasn’t the right time. That’s not true. This creature’s incredible. It makes me feel whole, safe.” Despite that feeling, she says the relationship with the child’s father was marked by abuse, leaving her emotionally trapped and terrified. Just days later, another entry details her anguish: “I’m killing my child on Thursday… I can’t have this baby because I have work to do to entertain this world.”
Applegate reflects on those writings with sorrow. She says she wrote a poem to her unborn child that June, convinced it was a baby girl. The journal entries show she viewed the experience as more than a medical procedure. It was, in her words, a moral and spiritual break that would stay with her for life.
In one passage, she predicts that the “bill for all the guilt and trauma” would come due in her own body. Decades later, she suggests that her health struggles may be part of that reckoning. Her reflections also include painful references to sexual abuse she suffered as a child and the long-term damage it caused. In a 1991 diary entry, she links guilt to physical illness, writing that guilt “is a disease… it begins in the brain and spreads through the body until it shuts off the mind and body.”
“I did know that something very dangerous was happening inside my soul,” she adds. “Something that might one day shut off my body.”
Applegate’s account has sparked renewed discussion about the emotional weight many women carry after abortion and how trauma in early life can resurface years later. Her words show raw pain, but also a clear warning. Decisions made in youthful confusion, she suggests, can echo across a lifetime.
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English (US) · 