According to People Magazine excerpts, Britney Spears writes in her long-awaited biography that she had an abortion during her romance with Justin Timberlake.
“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” the extract says, according to People. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
Timberlake’s representatives did not immediately reply to calls for comment.
Spears and Timberlake dated for a few years beginning when she was 17 and he was 18, causing a tabloid frenzy as they rose to prominence as two of the late 1990s and early 2000s’ defining pop stars.
In 2021, a New York Times documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” included a re-examination of the world’s reaction to their breakup, which was framed in the media as being Spears’ fault — partly because Timberlake implied in a music video that Spears had cheated on him. Timberlake apologised to Spears in an Instagram post without going into detail, stating he had “failed” her.
The memoir, titled “The Woman in Me,” is set to be released next week and is Spears’ first in-depth account of her life and career. It comes after her release from a legal conservatorship that has ruled her life for more than 13 years.
The excerpts released thus far recall the heady days preceding her signing a record deal at the age of 15, her inner monologue as she held a live snake in the famous moment at the 2001 Video Music Awards, and her loss of passion for performing while under the strictures of the conservatorship, which was instituted amid a series of public struggles in 2007 and 2008.
“I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore,” the extract went on to say. “As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point.”
The conclusion of the conservatorship over two years ago was heralded by waves of fury from fans who organised the #FreeBritney movement and attended rallies in Los Angeles in support of the end of the legal arrangement, which was mostly handled by her father, James P. Spears.
Spears, 41, has married, divorced her husband, and released two singles since the conservatorship ended; she has shared bits of her rage about the conservatorship in Instagram posts, but her memoir will include the most significant — and organised — insights yet into her thoughts on the ways in which the minutiae of her life were under others’ control even as she worked as an international pop star.
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