Kelly Clarkson Gets Emotional Recalling Pregnancy Hospitalizations Amid Arizona Abortion Ban

Tatiana Tenreyro
·3 min read
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Kelly Clarkson shared her own challenging pregnancy stories amid last week’s Arizona Supreme Court decision to allow the state to prepare to enforce a near-total abortion ban based on an 1864 law.

On Monday, Clarkson spoke to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about the Arizona court decision on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Clinton was on to promote Suffs, the Broadway musical about the women’s suffrage movement in America, which the former secretary of state is involved in as a producer.

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“Did you ever think in your lifetime we would see that happen?” Clarkson asked Clinton of what’s happening in Arizona. “It’s just insane to me, the thinking that went on in 1864. It’s a very different world. We know a lot more now. We are going backwards.”

“It is horrifying,” Clinton said. “I feared it would happen but I hoped it wouldn’t happen. Now here we are in the middle of this very difficult period for women in about half the states of our country, who cannot get the care that they need.

“The old law in Arizona is without exceptions [for rape and incest],” Clinton continued, “and the danger to women’s lives as well as to our right to make our own decisions about our bodies and ourselves is so profound. And there’s another element to it, which I find so troubling. I mean, there’s a kind of cruelty to it.”

Clarkson then shared that she was hospitalized during both of her pregnancies and feared losing her life. “I literally asked God, this is a real thing, to just take me and my son in the hospital for the second time, because I was like, ‘It’s the worst thing,'” she recalled, stopping to apologize as she began to get emotional thinking about her experience.

“It was my decision and I’m so glad I did it, I love my babies, but to make someone …” Clarkson continued. “And you don’t realize how hard it is. The fact that you would take that away from someone, that can literally kill them. The fact that if they’re raped by their family member and they have to — it’s just like insane to me.”

The “Stronger” singer used her platform on The Kelly Clarkson Show to try to combat voter apathy during the 2024 presidential election. “It’s hard to preach at someone that you have to care about something but at the same time, I feel like we’re going to end up in some kind of — not to sound dramatic but — some kind of civil war over things that I feel like we shouldn’t be divided on,” she said.

Clinton agreed, saying, “I think you’re 100 percent right. All I can do, as you just said, is to try to tell people — for example, there was a vote in the Arizona legislature to try to repeal this 1864 law, so that there could be a much more sensible approach. It lost. It matters who is representing you.”

The politician reminded viewers that voting is “your superpower — and it may not seem like it but it really is.”

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