Sally Field details illegal abortion before starring on Gidget

Sally Field is opening about her abortion experience to advocate for reproductive freedom, sharing that she still feels "very shamed about it" as a woman who was brought up in the 1950s.

The Oscar winner, 77, looked back on getting an illegal abortion pre-Roe v. Wade in the '60s at the age of 17. It occurred just months before she would headline the 1965 ABC sitcom Gidget and was a deeply "traumatic" experience, Field shared in an Instagram video posted on Sunday.

"I had no choices in my life. I didn't have a lot of family support or finances. I graduated high school but no one ever said, 'How about college?' Nothing," recalled Field. "I didn't know what I was gonna be, and then I found out I was pregnant."

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Thanks to the "bravery" and "generosity" of her family doctor who was a friend of the family, Field was able to receive care. The Steel Magnolias star recounted her doctor driving her, along with his wife and her mother, to Tijuana "in their brand-new Cadillac" to get the procedure done.

"We parked on a really scrungy looking street. It was scary," said Field. "And he parked about three blocks away and said, 'See that building down there?' And he gave me an envelope with cash and I was to walk into that building and give them the cash and then come right back to him."

Field described the procedure as "beyond hideous and life-altering."

The actress said she was not given an anesthetic. "There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether but he would then take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb weird, but I felt everything — how much pain I was in," she recalled. "I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame."

When they were finished, Field was rushed out of the room, as if "the building was on fire," she said. "They didn't want me there, you know, it was illegal." Field remains grateful to her family doctor, who would've very much "lost his license" if anyone found out he assisted her.

Then, "fate," or "something glorious outside of ourselves, whatever you believe, reached in," Field added. "A few months after that, I began auditions. I didn't have an agent. I wasn't really an actor. I'd been doing it in high school constantly. And I began auditioning. And by the end of that year, I was Gidget. I was the quintessential, all-American girl next door."

The one-season sitcom starred Field as a feisty teenager navigating life in Los Angeles with her widower dad (played by Don Porter) and best friend (Lynette Winter).

Field truly felt like the "quintessential all-American girl next door, because so many young women in my generation of women were going through this," she said. Though "hesitant" to share what she called her "horrific story," Field did so to call for a protection of reproductive freedom, and as an endorsement for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her VP running mate Tim Walz .

"Pay attention to this election," Field implored. "We can't go back."

The star first revealed she had an abortion in her 2018 memoir In Pieces. Watch Field's video message in full above.