In a candid conversation with Hillary Clinton on her eponymous talk show, Kelly Clarkson opened up about being hospitalized during both her pregnancies. On the April 15 episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” the pair were discussing the recent abortion ban in Arizona, and Clarkson shared her own personal experience feeling terrified during pregnancy, connecting it to how awful it is for someone to not have autonomy over their own body, healthcare, and medical choices.
Clarkson mentioned the Arizona ruling upheld last week, in which the state’s Supreme Court brought back an 1864 law that makes performing an abortion a felony. The only exception will be in cases where it’s necessary to save a pregnant person’s life, allowing no leeway for cases of rape, incest, or any other potential complications.
“Did you ever think in your lifetime we would see that happen?” she asked Clinton of the ruling. “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],” she 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 choked up recalling her pregnancies, in which she was hospitalized 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,’” before apologizing for getting “emotional.”
“It’s OK, because you’re speaking for so many. You’re speaking for literally millions of women in our country and around the world,” the former Secretary of State assured her.
“And it, um, it was just the worst…” Clarkson continued. “To make someone go through that— whew.” She noted that it was her decision to have both her children—daughter River, 9, and son Remington, 8—”And I’m so glad I did. I love my babies. But to make someone…”
“There’s a cruelty toward women, towards women’s lives,” agreed Clinton.
“And you don’t realize how hard it is. The fact that you would take that away from someone,” Clarkson continued. “That it can literally kill them. The fact if they’re raped by their family member and they have to—like that, it’s just, like, insane to me.”
In a 2015 interview with CBS This Morning when she was pregnant with Remington, the “American Idol” alum shared that she’d experienced “really bad” all-day sickness both times, adding, “I have to get IVs and fluids because I get so dehydrated.”
Thankfully, it seems Clarkson was able to get the care she needed. It’s something that so many women across the country are unable to access, particularly as states continue to pass restrictive abortion laws, as if abortion is not part of the necessary, life-saving care we all deserve, no matter who we are or where we live.
Upon discussing the voter apathy that seems to plague so many these days, Clinton reminded viewers that voting is “your superpower — and it may not seem like it but it really is.”
“I think you’re 100 percent right,” she continued. “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.”
