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Kelly Bishop is opening up about how terminating her pregnancy in her 30s shaped her relationship with politics today.
In her new memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” out Sept. 17, Bishop revealed that she had an abortion in her mid-30s while she was dating a man named Kevin.
“I was painfully aware that I’d never been faced with a more important decision in my life,” Bishop wrote in her memoir. “I tried making a list of pros and cons about carrying the child to term, and I can honestly say I couldn’t come up with a single pro.”
Bishop said that she never had a desire to have children of her own, despite the fact that she remains a proud stepparent to her late husband Lee Leonard’s daughter, Norma Sheryl Leonard (whom Bishop refers to as Sheryl). However, she tells TODAY.com that she hopes sharing her experience will help other women facing the decision feel less alone.
“That’s one of the reasons I went ahead and put that in the book because I wanted to put my voice in, too, of saying, ‘Look, here’s another person who’s just got a normal working life, not outrageous stuff, no scandals or anything, but this happened to me,’” Bishop explained to TODAY.com in an exclusive interview.
In the memoir, Bishop detailed her experience of visiting a Planned Parenthood site in 1978 to receive the procedure.
“Instead of handing me a paper gown and telling me to lie down in an examining room for the procedure, they had me sit down for a two-hour interview with an intelligent, sensitive young woman to discuss my decision — how I felt about it and why, how I thought I would feel about it later, just every possible repercussion that might come up,” Bishop wrote. “Then, at their insistence, I had to wait forty-eight hours before I could come back and have the abortion if that was still what I chose to do.”
In the memoir, Bishop described the “toll” that the procedure took on her emotionally but adds that she “never regretted it.”
“I felt, as I still do, that no one knows better than the woman who’s pregnant whether she’s suitable to be a committed, nurturing, engaged mother, and I have nothing but admiration for women who give birth knowing that they’ll be giving the child up for adoption to someone who’ll take better care of it than they’re capable of.”
The experience, she says, reshaped her relationship with politics, especially in light of when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The 1973 case made abortion a constitutional right, but once it was overturned, state governments and courts were given the power to decide reproductive health care regulations for their residents.
“I do completely agree with the concept of saying they’ve taken a right away from women,” Bishop tells TODAY.com.
Twenty-five years after Bishop received an abortion, she recalled marching in an abortion rights rally in Washington, D.C. with “Gilmore Girls” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.
“So many things about that day beyond the sheet number of people took my breath away,” Bishop wrote in her memoir. “It wasn’t the gathering of raging feminists some might have expected. There were lots and lots of men as well, along with countless families and children.
“A couple who looked to be in their early seventies. A woman pushing a baby in a stroller,” she continued. “A guy in his late teens, who was walking behind us and observed to his friend, loudly enough for us to hear, ‘You know, if men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would outnumber Starbucks.’”
Although Bishop described herself in the book as “not very political,” she tells TODAY.com that she’s “revved about the possibilities” of the upcoming election.
“I’m paying a lot more attention,” Bishop says.