Earlier this week, it was reported that Britney Spears’s upcoming memoir reveals that she had an abortion when she was dating Justin Timberlake.
The two stars were just teenagers when they started dating at the peak of their careers in 1999, and split in 2002.
While The Woman in Me is not due for release until next week, a preview that was published in People magazine says that Britney only had the abortion because Justin “was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
According to the publication, the star says that to her, the unplanned pregnancy was a “surprise” but not a “tragedy.” Britney adds, “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.”
“But 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,” she goes on before admitting that if it had been her choice alone, she would have gone ahead with the pregnancy.
Britney then calls the abortion “one of the most agonizing things” she has ever been through in her life.
And now Us Weekly has shared some more information about the abortion that is reportedly detailed in Britney’s book.
According to the publication, Justin’s attempt to comfort his then-girlfriend came in the form of music, and Britney recalls “crying and sobbing” on the bathroom floor after having the procedure while Justin strummed his guitar.
Britney apparently writes that Justin “thought maybe music would help.”
These recent revelations have put Justin and Britney’s relationship in a whole new light for many people, with Justin facing even more scrutiny for the way he treated the star after their split.
Reacting to the most recent update about Justin’s guitar playing, one person wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), “this has to be the boss of all fuckboy moments, how do you top that.”
Just months after their breakup in 2002, Justin encouraged speculation that Britney had cheated on him with his second solo single, “Cry Me a River,” which featured a Britney lookalike in the music video.
He also made a series of degrading and crude comments about his famous ex, and would regularly make jokes at her expense during interviews while she was widely vilified.
In one interview, Justin gleefully answered in the affirmative when asked, “Did you fuck Britney Spears?” When pressed on whether he’d had “oral intercourse” with her, Justin laughed and said, “I did it, I’m dirty.”
In 2021, the New York Times’ documentary Framing Britney Spears examined the way that Justin had publicly handled the breakup — and how his career had thrived while Britney’s name was dragged through the mud.
Amid the mounting backlash at the time, Justin issued an apology to Instagram in which he acknowledged that he’d benefited from misogyny.
Elsewhere in Britney’s new book, she is said to confirm that she cheated on Justin with dancer Wade Robson — while also revealing that Justin had cheated on her “a couple of times” during their relationship, including with another high-profile celebrity.
Justin has not publicly responded to any of his ex’s claims, but a source told Entertainment Tonight that he is “focusing on his own family and trying not to concern himself with Britney’s memoir.”
The insider added that Justin and his wife, Jessica Biel, “want everyone to grow and evolve instead of continuing to bring up the past.”
But Justin has since been accused of using online bots to defend himself amid the growing scrutiny that he faces on social media, with people noticing that multiple suspicious-looking X accounts have tweeted the exact same thing, verbatim, in his defense.
The spammed tweet reads, “Two consenting adults made a joint decision what was best for them at that period in their lives, I see no issue.”
