All Saints singer Melanie Blatt has revealed she and bandmate Nicole Appleton experienced pressure to have abortions when the group was at the height of its fame in the 1990s.
Speaking in a new BBC documentary named Girlbands Forever, Blatt, 50, spoke about her manager’s response to her and her bandmate being pregnant, saying, “At the airport LAX, our manager, he was behind us, was telling us to abort our babies”. Blatt added that they were told they would ”ruin everything” and that “it was the end of the band”.
Blatt said, “It wasn’t people congratulating us. It was more like this look of dread and worry and the realisation that things are going to change”.
Blatt decided against having an abortion and gave birth to a daughter, Lilyella, in 1999, while Appleton had an abortion following pressure from the record company. Following the abortion, Appleton said she felt suicidal, saying, “After having my abortion, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what I had done. I wanted to kill myself”.
She added, “I was horrified, violated by what I felt was the power of an industry that leads a woman to sacrifice her child to keep a band together. What mattered was our success and our ability to make money”, she added.
Appleton’s then-partner, singer Robbie Williams, said “she was instructed to get rid of our baby” and that it had “torn him apart”.
Celebrities under pressure to have abortions
Other celebrities have also shared accounts of being pressured to have abortions. In her memoir in 2023, Britney Spears revealed that she became pregnant while dating fellow popstar Justin Timberlake and described her subsequent abortion as “one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life”.
She said, “Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young”.
“If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father”.
“To this day, it’s one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life”.
During her appearance on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, Spears’ sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, revealed she experienced pressure to have an abortion when she was pregnant at 16, telling fellow contestants and viewers about her teen pregnancy. “When I first got pregnant… They didn’t want me to have the baby”, she said.
Despite the intense scrutiny of being in the public eye, she decided not to have an abortion and gave birth to her daughter, Maddie Briann Aldridge.
Artist Tracey Emin has spoken about the mental and physical pain she endured following an abortion of twins that went wrong. At 26, she had an abortion, but it did not go according to plan when the remains of one of the unborn twins were not removed from her uterus. “I felt racked with guilt”, she said.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “The fact that Melanie Blatt and Nicole Appleton were put under pressure to have abortions is appalling. The record executives who had a hand in this should be ashamed”.
“Sadly, they are not alone, as many women, including celebrities, feel pressured into having abortions that they do not want. Hopefully, as more of these stories come to light, women will increasingly have the support they need to resist this kind of pressure and those who would apply it will be prevented from doing so”.
