Celebrity

Paris Hilton Opens Up About Having An Abortion In Her Early 20s

“This was also something that I didn’t want to talk about because there was so much shame around that.”

Paris Hilton arrives at the Pre-Grammy Gala held at The Beverly Hilton on February 4, 2023 in Beverl...
Mark Von Holden/Variety/Getty Images

In the lead-up to her upcoming memoir, Paris Hilton is opening up about her life more than ever before. In an interview with Glamour UK published on Feb. 23, the heiress, who just welcomed her first child with husband Carter Reum in January, revealed that she had an abortion in her early 20s. “This was also something that I didn’t want to talk about because there was so much shame around that,” she said. “I was a kid and I was not ready for that.”

Now, upset by the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, Hilton wants to use her platform to share her story and advocate for abortion rights as well. “I think it is important,” she told the outlet. “There’s just so much politics around it and all that, but it’s a woman’s body… Why should there be a law based on that? It’s your body, your choice and I really believe in that. It’s mind-boggling to me that they’re making laws about what you do with your reproductive health, because if it were the other way around with the guys, it would not be this way at all.”

When the reporter proceeded to ask if she felt betrayed by the Supreme Court justices placed by her “close family friend” former President Donald Trump, whom Hilton admitted to voting for in 2016, the reality star clarified that they were not on good terms with a stern “not anymore.”

Hilton has previously expressed how she was hesitant to speak about her adolescent traumas until her 2020 documentary This Is Paris, where she opened up about experiencing alleged physical and verbal abuse at behavior-modification boarding schools from the ages of 16 to 18. As a result, Hilton has started raising awareness about these abusive practices and lobbying for more protections for students in youth treatment centers, even visiting the White House in May 2022. “I feel most empowered when I’m doing my advocacy work,” she said. “Knowing that I can be the hero I always needed when I was a little girl.”

Almost two decades after her abortion, Hilton has become a mother, announcing on Jan. 24 that she and Reum had welcomed a baby boy via surrogate. On the Feb. 22 of her This Is Paris podcast, she revealed that his name was Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum by reading an excerpt from her upcoming book. “If all goes well, by the time you read this, Carter and I will have a baby boy,” she wrote. “We plan to name him Phoenix, a name that I decided on years ago when I was searching cities, countries, and states on a map looking for something to go with Paris and London.”

Hilton promises to open up more about her childhood and traumatic experiences in her Paris: The Memoir, which is being published on March 14.