Leslie Jones had three abortions when she was younger.
The 56-year-old actress had her first termination when she was 18 and dating a man names Richard Brooks, who was 27 at the time, and she told how their on-again, off-again romance lasted “too many years” and they didn’t use birth control, but she has no regrets about her decisions.
She wrote in her new memoir Leslie F—— Jones: “All I felt was an urgency to not be pregnant. So, I had an abortion, and it was very hard. I don’t want to say it was wrong, because to this day I would do the same thing.”
Jones — whose mother never recovered after she suffered a massive stroke when her daughter was young — expressed her regret that she just “didn’t know any of that stuff” about preventing pregnancy.
She wrote: “My mom got sick early in my life and she wasn’t there to teach me about [sex education].”
After undergoing three abortions, the former “Saturday Night Live” star realized: “This is not a birth control method.”
Jones credits Planned Parenthood, which provides sex education and information, and reproductive health care, for saving her life.
She said: “I still give money to them to this day. When I went to Planned Parenthood, I finally learned how to prevent pregnancies and take care of myself. Thank God for those people and what they do.”
The “Supermarket Sweep” host — who split from Brooks in 2010 after he allegedly gave her an STD and got someone else pregnant — explained her fear of giving birth came after her health class was shown a video in ninth grade.
She told People magazine: “I remember running all the way home and I looked right at my mom and said, ‘I will never do that!’ ”
And Jones doesn’t regret not having had a family of her own.
She said: “I didn’t get married and have kids, but I don’t know if that’s what I wanted. I’ve always wanted to take care of myself.”
